"Will Durant's Fascination with Ancient Egypt"

Egypt won the gift of the Nile one in the Delta Alexandria the Nile the pyramids the Sphinx this is a perfect Harbor outside the long breakwater the waves topple over one another roughly within it the sea is a silver mirror there on the little island of Pharos when Egypt was very old saw Stratos built his great lighthouse of white marble five hundred feet high as a beacon to all ancient mariners of the Mediterranean and as one of the seven wonders of the world time and the nagging waters have washed it away but a new lighthouse has taken its place and guides the steamer through the rocks to the keys of Alexandria here that astonishing boy statesman Alexander founded the subtle polyglot metropolis that was to inherit the culture of Egypt Palestine and Greece in this harbor Caesar received without gladness the severed head of Pompey as the Train glides through the city glimpses come of unpaved alleys and streets heat waves dancing in the air workmen naked to the waist black garbed women bearing burdens sturdily white robed and turbaned moslems of regal dignity and in the distance spacious squares and shining palaces perhaps as fair as those that the ptolemies built when Alexandria was the meeting place of the world then suddenly it is open country and the city recedes into the horizon of the Fertile Delta that green triangle which looks on the map like the leaves of a lofty palm tree held up on the slender stalk of the Nile once no doubt this Delta was a bay patiently the broad stream filled it up too slowly to be seen with detritus carried down a thousand miles now from this little corner of mud enclosed by the many mouths of the river six million peasants grow enough cotton to export a hundred million dollars worth of it every year they're bright and calm under the glaring Sun fringed with slim palms and grassy banks is the most famous of all rivers we cannot see the desert that lies so close beyond it or the great empty wadis riverbeds where once its fertile tributaries flowed we cannot realize yet how precariously narrow a thing this Egypt is owing everything to the river and harassed on either side with hostile shifting sands now the train passes amid the alluvial plain the land is half covered with water and crossed everywhere with irrigation canals in the ditches and the fields black fella he neighbor knowing no garment but a cloth about the loins the river has had one of its annual inundations which begin at the summer solstice and last for a hundred days through that overflow the desert became fertile and Egypt blossomed in Herodotus phrase as the gift of the Nile it is clear why civilization found here one of its earliest homes nowhere else was a river so generous in irrigation and so controllable in its rise only Mesopotamia could rival it for thousands of years the peasants have watched this rise with anxious eagerness to this day public Criers announced its progress each morning in the streets of Cairo so the past with the quiet continuity of this River flows into the future lightly touching the present on its way only historians make divisions time does not but every gift must be paid for and the peasant though he valued the rising waters knew that without control they could ruin as well as irrigate his fields so from time beyond history he built these ditches that cross and re-cross the land he caught the surplus in canals and when the river fell he raised the water with buckets pivoted on long poles singing as he worked the songs that the Nile is heard for five thousand years for as these peasants are now somber and laughter lists even in their singing so they have been in all likelihood for 50 centuries this water raising apparatus is as old as the pyramids and the million of these fella Hien despite the conquests of Arabic still speak the language of the ancient monuments here in the Delta of fifty miles southeast of Alexandria is the site of no Curtis once filled with industrious scheming Greeks thirty miles farther east the site of saia's where in the centuries before the Persian and Greek conquests the native civilization of Egypt had its last revival and then 129 miles southeast of Alexandria is Cairo a beautiful city but not Egyptian the conquering Muslims founded it in AD 968 then the bright spirit of France overcame the gloomy Arab and built here a Paris in the desert exotic and unreal one must pass through it by motorcar or leisurely theocritus a gypped at the pyramids how small they appear from the long road that approaches them did we come so far to see so little but then they grow larger as if they were being lifted up into the air round the turn in the road we surprised the edge of the desert and there suddenly the pyramids confront us bare and solitary in the sand gigantic and morose against an italian sky a motley crowd scrambles about their base stout businessmen on blinking donkeys stouter ladies secure in carts young men prancing on horseback young women sitting uncomfortably on Camelback their silk knees glistening in the Sun and everywhere grasping Arabs we stand where Caesar and Napoleon stood and remember that 50 centuries look down upon us where the father of history came 400 years before Caesar and heard the tales that were too startled Pericles a new perspective of time comes to us two millenniums seemed to fall out of the picture and Caesar Herodotus and ourselves appear for a moment contemporary and modern before these tombs that were more ancient to them than the Greeks are to us nearby the Sphinx half lion and half philosopher grimly closed the sand and glares unmoved at the transient visitor and the eternal plain it is a savage monument as if designed to frighten old Ledger's and make children retire early the lion body passes into a human head with prognathous jaws and cruel eyes the civilization is the built at circa 29 90 BC and not quite forgotten barbarism once the sand covered it and Herodotus who saw so much that is not there says not a word of it nevertheless what wealth these old Egyptians must have had what power and skill even in the infancy of history to bring these vast stones 600 miles to raise some of them weighing many tons to a height of half a thousand feet and to pay or even to feed the hundred thousand slaves who toiled for 20 years on these pyramids Herodotus is preserved for us an inscription that he found on one pyramid recording the quantity of radishes garlic and onions consumed by the workmen who built it these things - and to have their amour despite these familiar friends we go away disappointed there is something barbarically primitive or barbarically modern in this brute hunger for size it is the memory and imagination of the beholder that swollen with history make these monuments great in themselves they are little ridiculous vainglorious tombs in which the dead sought eternal life perhaps pictures have too much ennoble dem photography can catch everything but dirt and enhances man-made objects with noble vistas of land and sky the sunset at Giza is greater than the pyramids to upstream Memphis the masterpiece of queen hatshepsut the colossi of memnon Luxor and Karnak the grandeur of Egyptian civilization from Cairo a little steamer moves up the river that is southward through six leisurely days to Karnak and Luxor 20 miles below Cairo it passes Memphis the most ancient of Egypt's capitals here where the great 3rd and 4th dynasties lived in a city of 2 million souls nothing now greets the eye but a row of small pyramids in the grove of palms for the rest there is only desert infinite villainess sand slipping under the feet stinging the eyes filling the pores covering everything stretching from Morocco across Sinai Arabia Turkestan Tibet to Mongolia along that sandy belt across two continents civilization once built its seats and now is gone driven away as the ice receded by increasing heat and decreasing rain by the Nile for a dozen miles on either side runs a ribbon of fertile soil from the Mediterranean to Nubia there is only this strip redeemed from the desert this is the thread upon which hung the life of Egypt and yet how brief seems the life span of Greece or the millennium of Rome beside the long record from meanies to Cleopatra a week later the steamer is at Luxor on this side now covered with Arab Hamlet's or drifting sand once stood the greatest of Egypt's capitals the richest city of the very ancient world known to the Greeks as Thebes and to its own people Wes e and nae on the eastern slope of the Nile is the famous Winter Palace of Luxor a flame with bougainvillea across the river the Sun is setting over the tombs of the Kings into a sea of sand and the sky is flaked with gaudy tints of purple and gold bar in the West the pillars of queen hatshepsut's noble temple gleam looking for all the world like some classic colonnade in the morning lazy sailboats very The Seeker across the river so quiet and unpretentious that no one would suspect that it had been flowing here for uncounted centuries then over mile after mile of desert through dusty mountain passes and by historic graves until the masterpiece of the great Queen Rises still and white and the trembling heat here the artist decided to transform nature and her hills into a beauty greater than her own into the very face of the granite cliff he built these columns as stately as those that China's made for Pericles it is impossible seeing these to doubt that Greece took our architecture perhaps through Crete from this initiative race and on the walls vast bar reliefs alive with motion and thought tell the story of the first great woman in history and not the least of Queens on the road backs at two giants in stone representing the most luxurious of Egypt's monarchs I'm in hotep the third but mistakenly called the colossi of memnon by the bittakers of Greece each is 70 feet high weighs 700 tons and is carved out of a single rock on the base of one of them are the inscriptions left by Greek tourists who visited these ruins 2,000 years ago again the centuries fall out of reckoning and those Greeks seem strangely contemporary with us in the presence of these ancient things a mile to the north lie the stone remains of ramasees the second one of the most fascinating figures in history beside whom Alexander is an immature trifle alive for 99 years Emperor for 67 father of 150 children here he is a statue once 56 feet high now 56 feet long prostrate and ridiculous in the sand Napoleon's servants measured him zealously they found his ear 3 under feet long his foot five feet wide his weight a thousand tons for him Bonaparte should have used his later salutation of Goethe voila nom behold a man all around now on the west bank of the Nile is the City of the Dead at every turn some burrowing Egyptologist has unearthed a royal tomb the grave of Tutankhamun is closed locked even in the faces of those who thought that gold would open anything but the tomb of Seti the first is open and there in the cool earth one may gaze at decorated ceilings and passages and marvel at the wealth and and skill that could build such sarcophagi and surround them with such art in one of these tombs the excavators saw on the sand the footprints of the slaves who had carried the mummy to its place 3,000 years before but the best remains adorn the eastern side of the river here at Luxor the lordly Amenhotep the third with the spoils of tutmes the thirds victories began to build his most pretentious edifice death came upon him as he built then after the work had been neglected for a century ramasees the second finished it in regal style at once the quality of Egyptian architecture floods the spirit here our scope and power not beauty merely but a masculine sublimity a wide court now waste with sand paved of old with marble on three sides majestic colonnades matched by karnak alone on every hand carved stone in bar relief and royal statues proud even in desolation imagine eight long stems of the papyrus plant nurse of letters and here the form of art at the base of the fresh unopened flowers bind the stems with five firm bands that will give Beauty strength then picture the whole stately stalk in stone this is the Popeye reformed column of luxor fancy a court of such columns upholding massive and tablatures and shade giving porticoes seen the whole as the ravages of 30 centuries have left it then estimate the men who in what we once thought the childhood of civilization could conceive and execute such monuments through ancient ruins and modern squalor a rough footpath leads to what egypt keeps as its final offering the temples of Karnak half a hundred pharaohs took part in building them from the last dynasties of the old kingdom to the days of the Ptolemies generation by generation the structures grew until sixty acres were covered with the Lord layest offerings that architecture ever made to the gods an avenue of sphinxes leads to the place where Shambo Yong founder of Egyptology stood in 1828 and wrote I went at last in the palace or rather to the city of monuments to Karnak there all the magnificence of the pharaohs appeared to me all that men have imagined and executed on the grandest scale no people ancient or modern has conceived the art of architecture on a scale so sublime so great so grandiose as the ancient Egyptians they conceived like men a hundred feet high to understand it would require maps and plans and all an architect's learning a spacious enclosure of many courts one-third of a mile on each side a population of once eighty six thousand statues a main group of buildings constituting the temple of amman 1000 by 300 feet great pylons were gates between one court and the next the perfect heraldic pillars have tutmes the third broken off rudely at the top but still of astonishingly delicate carving and design the festival hall of the same formidable monarch its fluted shafts here and there anticipating all the power of the Doric column in Greece the little temple of ptah with graceful pillars rivaling the living palms beside them the prom in a began the work of tut mrs. builders with bare and massive colonnades symbol of Egypt's Napoleon above all the hypostyle Hall a very forest of 140 gigantic columns crowded closed to keep out the exhausting Sun flowering out at their tops into spreading palms of stone and holding up with impressive strength a roof of mammoth slabs stretched in solid granite from capital to capital nearby two slender obelisks monoliths complete in symmetry and grace rise like pillars of light amid the ruins of statues and temples and announce in their inscriptions the proud message of queen hatshepsut to the world these obelisks the carving says are of hard granite from the quarries of the south there cops are a Finegold chosen from the best in all foreign lands they can be seen from afar on the river the splendor of their radiance fills the two lands and when the solar disk appears between them it is truly as if he rose up into the horizon of the sky you who after long years shall see these monuments who shall speak of what I have done you will say we do not know we do not know how they can have made a whole mountain of gold to Gilda my have given gold measured by the bushel as though it were sacks of grain for I knew that Karnak is the celestial horizon of the earth what a queen and what kings perhaps this first great civilization was the finest of all and we have but begun to uncover its glory near the sacred lake at Karnak men are digging carrying away the soil patiently in little paired baskets slung over the shoulder on a pole an Egyptologist is bending absorbed over hieroglyphics on two stones just rescued from the earth he is one of a thousand such men Carter's and breasted sand masts Burroughs Petrie's and cap ours and bagels living simply here in the heat and dust trying to read for us the riddle of the Sphinx to snatch from the secretive soil the art and literature the history and wisdom of Egypt every day the earth and the elements fight against them superstition curses and hampers them moisture and corrosion attacked the very monuments they have exhumed and the same Nile that gives food to Egypt creeps in its overflow into the ruins of Karnak loosens the pillars tumbles them down and leaves upon them when it subsides a deposit of saltpeter that eats like a leprosy into the stone let us contemplate the glory of Egypt once more in her history and her civilization before her last monuments crumble into the sand to the master-builders one the discovery of Egypt shampoo yo and the rosetta stone the recovery of Egypt is one of the most brilliant chapters in archaeology the Middle Ages knew of Egypt as a Roman colony and a Christian settlement the Renaissance presumed that civilization had begun with Greece even the Enlightenment though it concerned itself intelligently with China and India knew nothing of Egypt beyond the pyramids Egyptology was a byproduct of Napoleonic imperialism when the great Corsican led a French expedition to Egypt in 1798 he took with him a number of draftsman and engineers to explore and map the terrain and made place also for certain scholars absurdly interested in Egypt for the sake of a better understanding of history it was this Corps of men who first revealed the temples of Luxor and Karnak to the modern world and the elaborate description delhi seeped 1809 to 1813 which they prepared for the french academy was the first milestone in the scientific study of this forgotten civilization for many years however they were unable to read the inscriptions surviving on the monuments typical of the scientific temperament was the patient devotion with which sample young one of these savants applied himself to the decipherment of the hieroglyphics he found at last an obelisk covered with such sacred carvings in egyptian but bearing at the base a greek inscription which indicated that the writing concerned Ptolemy and Cleopatra guessing the two hieroglyphics often repeated with the Royal cartouche attached with the names of these rulers he made out tentatively 1822 eleven Egyptian letters this was the first proof that Egypt had had an alphabet then he applied this alphabet to a great black stone slab that Napoleon's troops had stumbled upon near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile this rosetta stone contained an inscription in three languages first in hieroglyphics second in demotic the popular script of the Egyptians and third in Greek with his knowledge of Greek and the eleven letters made out from the obelisk champignon after more than twenty years of labour deciphered the whole inscription discovered the entire Egyptian alphabet and opened the way to the recovery of a lost world it was one of the peaks in the history of history - prehistoric Egypt Paleolithic Neolithic the mad Aryans pre-dynastic race since the radicals of one age are the reactionaries of the next it was not to be expected that men who created Egyptology should be the first to accept as authentic the remains of Egypt's Old Stone Age after 40 they serve all Nishant bacteria when the first Flint's were unearthed in the valley of the Nile sir Flinders Petrie not usually hesitant with figures class them is the work of post dynastic generations and Maspero whose lordly area Edition did know her to his urbane and polished style ascribed Neolithic Egyptian pottery to the Middle Kingdom nevertheless in 1895 DeMorgan revealed an almost continuous gradation of Paleolithic cultures corresponding substantially with their succession in Europe in the flint hand axes harpoons arrowheads and hammers exhumed all along the Nile imperceptibly the Paleolithic remains graduating to Neolithic at depths indicating an age 10,000 to 4,000 BC the stone tools became more refined and reach indeed a level of sharpness finish and precision unequaled by any other Neolithic culture known towards the end of the period metalwork enters in the form of Oz's chisels and pins of copper and ornaments of silver and gold finally as a transition to history agriculture appears in the year 1901 near the little town of bhaduri halfway between Cairo and Karnak bodies were excavated Amman implements indicating a date approximating to 40 centuries before Christ in the intestines of these bodies preserved through six millenniums by the dry heat of the sand were husks of unconsumed barley since barley does not grow wild in Egypt it is presumed that the bad Aryans had learned to cultivate cereals from that early age the inhabitants of the Nile Valley began the work of irrigation cleared the jungles and the swamps one the river from the crocodile and the hippopotamus and slowly laid the groundwork of civilization these and other remains give us some inkling of Egyptian life before the first of the historic dynasties it was a culture midway between hunting and agriculture and just beginning to replace stone with metal tools the people made boats ground corn wove linen and carpets had jewels and perfumes barbers and domesticated animals and delighted to draw pictures chiefly of the prey they soon they painted upon their simple pottery figures of mourning women representations of animals and men and geometrical designs and they carved such excellent products as the gable alaric knife they had pictographic writing and Sumerian like cylinder seals no one knows whence these early Egyptians came learned at guesses inclined to the view that they were a cross between Nubian Ethiopian and Libyan natives on one side and Semitic or our monoid immigrants on the other even at that date there were no pure races on the earth probably the invaders or immigrants from Western Asia brought a higher culture with them and their intermarriage with the vigorous native stocks provided that ethnic blend which is often the prelude to a new civilization slowly from 4000 to 3000 BC these mingling groups became a people and created the Egypt of history 3 the Old Kingdom the gnomes the first historic individual Cheops Chephren the purpose of the pyramids art of the tombs mummification already by 4000 BC these peoples of the Nile had forged a form of government the population along the river was divided into gnomes in each of which the inhabitants were essentially of one stock acknowledged the same totem obeyed the same chief and worshipped the same gods by the same rights throughout the history of ancient Egypt these gnomes persisted there no marks or rulers having more or less power and autonomy according to the weakness or strength of the reigning Pharaoh as all developing structures tend toward an increasing interdependence of the parts so in this case the growth of trade and the rising costliness of war forced the gnomes to organize themselves into two kingdoms one in the south one in the north a division probably reflecting the conflict between African natives and Asiatic immigrants this dangerous accentuation of geographic and ethnic differences was resolved for a time when meanies a half legendary figure brought the two lands under his united power promulgated a body of laws given him by the god Thoth established the first historic dynasty built a new Capitol at Memphis taught the people in the words of an ancient Greek historian to use Able's and couches and introduced luxury and an extravagant manner of life the first real person in known history is not a conqueror or a king but an artist and a scientist in hotel physician architect and chief advisor of Kings Oh sir circa 3150 BC he did so much for Egyptian medicine but later generations worshipped him as a god of knowledge author of their sciences and their arts and at the same time he appears to have founded the school of architecture which provided the next dynasty with the first great builders in history it was under his administration according to Egyptian tradition that the first stone house was built it was he who planned the oldest Egyptian structure extant the Step Pyramid of Saqqara a terraced structure of stone which for centuries set the style in tombs and apparently was he who designed the funerary temple of zoser with its lovely lotus columns and its limestone paneled walls in these old remains at saqqara at what is almost the beginning of historic Egyptian art we find fluted shafts as fair as any the Greece would build reliefs full of realism and vitality green fails richly colored glazed earthenware rivaling the products of medieval Italy and a powerful stone figure of King Djoser himself obscured in its details by the blows of time but still revealing an astonishingly subtle and sophisticated phase we do not know what concourse of circumstances made the Fourth Dynasty the most important in Egyptian history before the 18th perhaps it was the lucrative mining operations in the last reign of the third perhaps the ascendancy of Egyptian merchants in Mediterranean trade perhaps the brutal energy of Khufu the key ops of Herodotus who reigned from 30 98 to 30 75 BC first Pharaoh of the new house Herodotus has passed on to us the traditions of the Egyptian priests concerning this builder of the first of Jesus pyramids now they tell me that to the reign of Ramzan itis there was a perfect distribution of justice and that all Egypt was in a high state of prosperity but that after him Cheops coming to reign over them plunged into every kind of wickedness for that having shut up all the temples he ordered all the Egyptians to work for himself Salma accordingly were appointed to draw stones from the quarries in the Arabian Mountains down the Nile others he ordered to receive the stones when transported in vessels across the river and they were to the number of a hundred thousand men at a time each party during three months the time during which the people were thus harassed by toil lasted ten years on the road which they constructed and along which they drew the stones a work in my opinion not much less than the pyramid of his successor and rival builder Khafre the Kathryn of Herodotus who ruled from thirty sixty seven to thirty eleven BC we know something almost at first hand for the diorite portrait which is among the treasures of the Cairo Museum pictures him if not as he looked certainly as we might conceive this Pharaoh of the second pyramid who ruled Egypt for 56 years on his head is the Falken symbol of the royal power but even without that sign we should know that he was every inch a king proud direct fearless piercing eyes a powerful nose and a frame of reserved and quiet strength it is evident that nature had long since learned how to make men and art had long since learned how to represent them why did these men build pyramids their purpose was not architectural but religious the pyramids were tombs lineally descended from the most primitive of burial mounds apparently the Pharaoh believed like any commoner among his people that every living body was inhabited by a double or cow which need not die with the breath and that the car would survive all the more completely if the flesh were preserved against hunger violence and decay the pyramid by its height its form and its position sort stability as a means to deathlessness and except for its square corners it took the natural form that any homogeneous group of solids would take if allowed to fall unimpeded to earth again it was to have permanence and strength therefore stones were piled up here with mad patience as if they had grown by the wayside and had not been carried from quarries hundreds of miles away in Khufu's pyramid there are two and a half million blocks some of them weighing 150 tons all of them averaging two and a half tons they cover half a million square feet and rise 481 feet into the air and the mass is solid only a few blocks were emitted to leave a secret passageway for the carcass of the king a guide leads the trembling visitor on all fours into the cavernous mausoleum up a hundred crouching steps to the very heart of the pyramid there in the damp still center buried in darkness and secrecy once rested the bones of Khufu and his queen the marble sarcophagus of the Pharaoh is still in place but broken and empty even these stones could not deter human thievery nor all the curses of the gods since the car was conceived as the minut image of the body it had to be fed clothed and served after the death of the frame lavatories were provided in some royal tombs for the convenience of the departed soul and a funerary text expresses some anxiety lest the car for want of food should feed upon its own excreta one expects the Egyptian burial customs if traced to their source would lead to the primitive interment of a warrior's weapons with his corpse or some institution like the Hindu sati the burial of a man's wives and slaves with him that they may attend to his needs this having proved accent to the wives and slaves painters and sculptors were engaged to draw pictures carved bar reliefs and make statuettes resembling these aids by a magic formula usually inscribed upon them the carving or painted objects would be quite as effective as the real ones a man's descendants were inclined to be lazy and economical and even if he had left an endowment to cover the costs they were apt to neglect the rule that religion originally put upon them of supplying the dead with probe and hence pictorial substitutes were in any case a wise precaution they could provide the car of the deceased with fertile fields plump oxen innumerable servants and busy artisans at an attractively reduced rate having discovered this principle the artists accomplished marbles with it one tomb picture shows a field being plowed the next shows the grain being reaped or thrashed another the bread being baked one shows the bull copulating with the cow another the calf being born another the grown cattle being slaughtered another the meat served hot on the dish a fine limestone bar relief in the tomb of Prince Rojo death portrays the dead man enjoying the varied vittles on the table before him never since has art done so much for men fine the cow was a short long life not only by burying the cadaver in a sarcophagus of the hardest stone but by treating it to the most painstaking mummification so well was this done that to this day bits of hair and flesh cling to the Royal skeletons Herodotus vividly describes the Egyptian embalmers art first they draw out the brains through the nostrils with an iron hook raking part of it out in this manner the rest by the infusion of drugs then with a sharp stone they make an incision in the side and take out all the bowels and having cleansed the abdomen and rinsed it with palm wine they next sprinkle it with pounded perfume then having filled the belly with pure myrrh cassia and other perfumes they sew it up again and when they have done this they steep it in Natron leaving it under for 70 days for a longer time than this it is not lawful to steep it Natron is a silicate of sodium and aluminum at the expiration of 70 days they wash the corpse and wrap the whole body in bandages of wax and cloth smearing it with gum which the Egyptians commonly use instead of blue after this the relations having taken the body back again make a wooden case in the shape of a man and having made it they enclose the body and then having fastened it up they store it in a support role chamber setting it up right against the wall in this manner they prepare the bodies that are embalmed in the most expensive way all the world fears times as an Arab proverb but time fears the pyramids however the Pyramid of Khufu has lost twenty feet of its height and all its ancient marble casing is gone perhaps time is only leisurely with it beside it stands khafre's pyramid a trifle smaller but still capped with the granite casing that once covered at all humbly beyond this squats the pyramid of cafes successor man Cowley the macaronis of Herodotus who reigned from thirty eleven to twenty 988 BC covered not with granite but with shamefaced brick as if to announce that when men raised it the zenith of the old kingdom had passed the statues of men carried that have come down to us show him as a man more refined and less forceful than Caffrey civilization like life destroys what it has perfected them already it may be the growth of comforts and luxuries the progress of manners and morals had made men lovers of peace and haters of war suddenly a new figure appeared usurped men calories thrown and put an end to the pyramid builders dynasty for the Middle Kingdom the feudal age the 12th dynasty the Hyksos domination kings were never so plentiful as in Egypt history lumps them into dynasties monarchs of one line or family but even then they burden the memory in tolerably one of these early pharaohs pipi ii ruled egypt for 94 years 2738 - 26 44 bc the longest reign in history when he died anarchy and dissolution ensued the pharaohs lost control and feudal barons ruled the gnomes independently this alternation between centralized and decentralized power is one of the cyclical rhythms of history as if men tired alternately of a moderate liberty and excessive order after a dark age of four chaotic centuries a strong-willed Charlemagne arose set things severely in order changed the capital from Memphis to Thebes and under the title of Amon Emmett the first inaugurated that 12th dynasty during which all the arts excepting perhaps architecture reached a height of excellence never equaled in known Egypt before or again through an old inscription Amun Emmet speaks to us I was one who cultivated grain and loved the harvest God the Nile greeted me in every Valley none was hungry in my years none thirsted then men dwelt in peace through that which I wrought and conversed of me his reward was a conspiracy among the talleyrand's and Fouchet whom he had raised a high office he put it down with a mighty hand but left for his son Polonius like a scroll of bitter counsel an admirable formula for despotism but a heavy price to pay for royalty talkin to that which I say to thee that thou mayest be king of the earth the Dow mayest increased good harden myself against all sabor that's the people give heed to him who terrorizes them approach them not alone Phil not thy heart with a brother no not a friend when thou sleepest guard for thyself thine own heart for a man hath no friend in the day of evil this Stern ruler who seems to us so human across 4000 years established a system of administration that held for half a millennium wealth grew again and then art Sena stret the first to built a great canal from the Nile to the Red Sea repelled Nubian invaders and directed great temples at Heliopolis Abydos and Karnak 10 colossal seated figures of him have cheated time and litter the Cairo Museum another sinister at the third began the subjugation of Palestine drove back the recurrent Nubians and raised a steely or slab at the southern frontier not from any desire that ye should worship it but that he should fight for it Amun Emmet the third a great administrator builder of canals and irrigation put an end perhaps to effectively to the power of the Barons and replaced them with appointees of the King thirteen years after his death Egypt was plunged into disorder by dispute among rival claimants to the throne and the Middle Kingdom ended in two centuries of turmoil and disruption then the Hyksos nomads from Asia invaded disunited Egypt set fire to the cities razed the temples squandered the accumulated wealth destroyed much of the accumulated art and for 200 years subjected the Nile Valley to the rule of the Shepherd Kings ancient civilizations were little isles in a sea of barbarism prosperous settlements surrounded by hungry envious and warlike hunters and herders at any moment the wall of defense might be broken down so the kassitus rated Babylonia the Gauls attacked Greece and Rome the Huns over ran Italy the Mongols came down upon Peking soon however the conquerors in their turn grew fat and prosperous and lost control the Egyptians rose in a war of liberation expelled the Hyksos and established the eighteenth dynasty which was to lift Egypt a greater power wealth and glory than ever before five the Empire the great queen taught most the third the zenith of Egypt perhaps the invasion had brought another rejuvenation by the infusion of fresh blood but at the same time the new age marked the beginning of a thousand-year struggle between Egypt and Western Asia Thutmose the first not only consolidated the power of the new Empire but on the ground that Western Asia must be controlled to prevent further interruptions invaded Syria subjugated it from the coast to car kamesh put it under guard and tribute and returned to Thebes laden with spoils and the glory that always comes from the killing of men at the end of his 30-year reign he raised his daughter Hatshepsut to partnership with him on the throne for a time her husband and stepbrother ruled as thomas ii and dying named as his successor thomas the third son of toughness the first by a concubine but hatshepsut set this high destined youngster aside assumed full royal powers and proved herself a king in everything but gender even this exception was not conceded by her since sacred tradition required that every Egyptian ruler should be a son of the Great God Ammon Hotch Epps had arranged to be made at once male and divine a biography was invented for her by which Ammon had descended upon hot chef suits mother a Maasai in a flood of perfume and light his attentions had been gratefully received and on his departure he had announced that a Masai would give birth to a daughter in whom all the valor and strength of the God would be made manifest on earth to satisfy the prejudices of her people and perhaps the secret desire of her heart the great Queen had herself represented on the monuments as a bearded and breast 'lest warrior and though the inscriptions referred to her with the feminine pronoun they did not hesitate to speak of her as son of the son and Lord of the two lands when she appeared in public she dressed in male garb and wore a beard she had a right to determine her own sex for she became one of the most successful and beneficent of Egypt's many rulers she maintained internal order without undue tyranny and external peace without laws she organized a great expedition to punt presumably the eastern coast of Africa giving new markets to her merchants and new delicacies to her people she helped to beautify Karnak raised their two majestic obelisks built at Deir el-bahri the stately temple which her father had designed and repaired some of the damage that had been done to older temples by the Hyksos Kings I have restored that which was in ruins one of her proud inscriptions tells us I have raised up that which was unfinished since the Asiatics were in the midst of the Northland overthrowing that which had been made finally she built for herself a secret and ornate tomb among the sand swept mountains on the western side of the Nile in what came to be called the valley of the kings tombs her successors followed her example until some sixty royal simple curves had been cut into the hills and the City of the Dead began to rival living thieves in population the west end in Egyptian cities was the abode of dead aristocrats to go west and to die for 22 years the Queen ruled in wisdom and peace Thutmose the third followed with the reign of many wars Syria took advantage of hatshepsut its death to revolt it did not seem likely to the Syrians that Tut knows a lad of twenty-two would be able to maintain the empire created by his father but Thomas set off in the very year of his accession marched his army through contra and Gaza twenty miles a day and confronted the rebel forces at har Megiddo that is Mount Megiddo a little town so strategically placed between the rival Lebanon ranges on the road from Egypt to the Euphrates that it has been the Armageddon of countless Wars from that day to general allenbys in the same past where in 1918 the British defeated the Turks Thutmose the third 3390 seven years before defeated the Syrians and their allies then Chuck nos marched victorious through Western Asia subdue entak Singh and levying tribute and returned to Thebes in triumph six months after his departure this was the first of fifteen campaigns in which the irresistible toughness made Egypt master of the Mediterranean world not only did he conquer but he organized everywhere he left doubt he Garrison's and capable governors the first man in known history to recognize the importance of sea power he built a fleet that kept the Near East effectively in leash the spoils that he seized became the foundation of Egyptian art in the period of the Empire the tribute that he drained from Syria gave his people an epicurean ease and created a new class of artists who filled all Egypt with precious things we may vaguely estimate the wealth of the new Imperial government when we learned that on one occasion the Treasury was able to measure up nine thousand pounds of gold and silver alloy trade flourished in Thebes as never before the temples groaned with offerings and that Carnac the lordly promenade and Festival Hall rose to the greater glory of King and God then the King retired from the battlefield designed exquisite vases and gave himself to internal administration his Vizier or Prime Minister said of him as tired secretaries were to save Napoleon lo his majesty was one who knew what happened there was nothing of which he was ignorant he was the God of knowledge and everything there was no matter that he did not carry out he passed away after a rule of thirty-two some say 54 years having made Egyptian leadership in the Mediterranean world complete after him another conqueror amenhotep ii subdued again certain idolaters of liberty in syria and returned to thebes with seven captive kings still alive hanging head downward from the prow of the imperial galley six of them he sacrificed to amman with his own hand then another tut most who does not count and in 1412 Amenhotep the third began a long reign in which the accumulated wealth of a century of mastery brought Egypt to the Acne of her splendor a fine bust in the British Museum shows him as a man at once of refinement and of strength able to hold firmly together the Empire bequeathed to him and yet living in an atmosphere of comfort and elegance that might have been envied by Petronius or the Medici only the exhuming of Tutankhamun's relics could make us credit the traditions and records of Amenhotep riches and luxury in his reign Thebes was as majestic as any city in history her streets crowded with merchants her markets filled with the goods of the world her buildings surpassing and magnificence all those of ancient or modern capitals they're imposing palaces receiving tribute from an endless chain of vassal states their massive temples and stall over with gold and adorned with every art her spacious villas and costly chateaus her shaded promenade sand artificial Lakes providing the scene for sumptuous displays of fashion that anticipated Imperial Rome such was a gypsy a pedal in the days of her glory in the rain before her fall 3 the civilization of Egypt one agriculture behind these kings and queens were pawns behind these temples palaces and pyramids were the workers of the cities and the peasants of the fields the population of Egypt in the fourth century before Christ is estimated at some 7 million souls Herodotus describes them optimistically as he found them about 450 BC they gather in the fruits of the earth with less labour than any other people for they have not the toil of breaking up the furrow with the plow nor of hoeing nor of any other work which all other men must labor at to obtain a crop of corn but when the river has come of its own accord and irrigated their fields and having irrigated them has subsided then each man shows his own land and turns his swine into it and when the seed has been trodden into it by the swine he waits for harvest time then he gathers it in as the swine trod in the seed so Apes were tamed and taught to pluck fruit from the trees and the same Nile that irrigated the fields deposited upon the minutes inundation thousands of fish in shallow pools even the same net with which the peasant fish during the day was used around his head at night as a double protection against mosquitos nevertheless it was not he who profited by the bounty of the river every acre of the soil belonged to the Pharaoh and other men could use it only by his kind indulgence every tiller of the earth and to pay him an annual tax of 10 or 20% in kind large tracts were owned by the feudal barons or other wealthy men the size of some of these estates may be judged from the circumstance that one of them had 1500 cows cereals fish and meat were the chief items of diet one fragment tells the schoolboy what he is permitted to eat it includes 33 forms of flesh 48 baked meats and 24 varieties of drink the rich washed down there deals with wine the poor with barley beer the lot of the peasant was hard the free farmer was subject only to the middleman in the tax collector who dealt with him on the most time-honoured of economic principles taking all that the traffic would bear out of the produce of the land here is how a complacent contemporary scribe conceived the life of the men who fed ancient Egypt dust I'll not recall the picture of the farmer when the tenth of his grain is levied worms have destroyed half the wheat and the hippopotami I've eaten the rest there are swarms of rats in the fields the grasshoppers alight there the cattle devour the little birds pilfer and if the farmer loses sight for an instant of what remains on the ground it is carried off by robbers moreover the thongs which bind the iron and the hoe are worn out and the team has died at the plough it is then that the scribe steps out of the boat at the landing place to levy the tithe and there come the keepers of the doors of the Kings granary with cudgels and Negroes with ribs of palm leaves crying come now come there is none and they throw the cultivator full-length upon the ground find him drag him to the canal and fling him in headfirst his wife is bound with him his children are put into Chains the neighbors in the meantime leave him and fly to save their grain it is a characteristic bit of literary exaggeration but the author might have added that the peasant was subject at anytime to the corvée doing forced labor for the king dredging the canals building roads tilling the royal lands or dragging great stones and obelisks for pyramids temples and palaces probably a majority of the laborers in the field were moderately content accepting their poverty patiently many of them were slaves captured in the wars or bonded for debt sometimes slave raids were organized and women and children from abroad were sold to the highest bidder at home an old relief in the Leyden Museum pictures a long procession of Asiatic captives passing gloomily into the land of bondage one sees them still alive on that vivid stone their hands tied behind their backs with their heads or thrust through rude hand cups of wood their faces empty with the apathy that has known the last despair - industry miners manufacturers workers engineers transport postal service Commerce and Finance scribes slowly as the peasants toiled an economic surplus grew and food was laid aside for workers in industry and trade having no minerals Egypt sought them in Arabia and Nubia the great distances offered no temptation to private initiative and for many centuries mining was a government monopoly copper was mined in small quantities iron was imported from the Hittites gold mines were found along the eastern coast in Nubia and in every vassal Treasury Diodorus Siculus 56 BC describes Egyptian miners following with lamp and picked the veins of gold in the earth children carrying up the heavy or stone mortars pounding at the bits old men and women washing the dirt away we cannot tell to what extent nationalistic exaggeration distorts the famous passage the kings of Egypt collect condemned prisoners prisoners of war and others who beset by false accusations have been in a fit of anger thrown into prison these sometimes alone sometimes with their entire family they send to the gold mines partly to exact adjust vengeance for crimes committed by the condemned partly to secure for themselves a big revenue through their toil as these workers can take no care of their bodies and have not even a garment to hide their nakedness there is no one who seeing these luckless people would not pity them because of the excess of their misery for there is no forgiveness or relaxation at all for the sick or the main door the old or for woman's weakness but all with blows are compelled to stick to their labor until worn out they die in their servitude thus the poor wretches even account the future more dreadful than the present because of the excess of their punishment and look to death is more desirable than life in its earliest dynasties Egypt learned the art of fusing copper with tin to make bronze first bronze weapons swords helmets and shields then bronze tools wheels rollers levers pulleys windlass 'iz wedges lathes screws drills that bore the toughest diorite stone saws that cut the massive slabs of the sarcophagi Egyptian workers made brick cement and plaster of Paris they glazed pottery blue glass and glorified both with color they were masters in the carving of wood they made everything from boats and carriages chairs and beds to handsome coffins that almost invited men to die out of animal skins they made clothing Quivers shields and seats all the arts of the tenor are pictured on the walls of the tombs and the curved knives represented there in the Tanners hand are used by cobblers to this day from the papyrus plant Egyptian artisans made ropes mats sandals and paper other workmen developed the arts of enameling and varnishing and applied chemistry to industry still others will tissues of the subtlest weave in the history of the textile art specimens of linen woven 4,000 years ago show today despite times corrosion a weave so fine that it requires a magnifying glass to distinguish it from silk the best work of the modern machine Loomis course in comparison with this fabric of the ancient Egyptian hand loom if says special we compare the technical inventory of the Egyptians with our own it is evident that before the invention of the steam mentioned we scarcely excelled them in anything the workers were mostly Freeman partly slaves in general every trade was a caste as in modern India and sons were expected to follow and take over the occupations of their fathers the great Wars brought in thousands of captives making possible the large estates and the triumphs of engineering ramasees the third presented 113 thousand slaves to the temples during the course of his reign the free artisans were usually organized for the specific undertaking by a chief workman or overseer who sold their labor as a group and paid them individually a chalk tablet in the British Museum contains a chief workman's record of 43 workers listing their absences and their causes ill or sacrificing to the gods or just plain lazy strikes were frequent once their pay being long overdue the workmen besieged the overseer and threatened him we have been driven here by hunger and thirst they told him we have no clothes we have no oil we have no food right to our Lord the Pharaoh on the subject and right to the governor of the gnome who is over us that they may give us something for our sustenance a Greek tradition reports a great revolt in Egypt in which the slaves captured a province and held it so long that time which sanctions everything gave them legal ship of it but of this revolt there is no record in Egyptian inscriptions it is surprising that a civilization so ruthless in its exploitation of labor should have known or recorded so few revolutions Egyptian engineering was superior to anything known to the Greeks or Romans or to Europe before the Industrial Revolution only our time has excelled it and we may be mistaken senator at the third for example built a wall 27 miles long to gather into Lake nearest the waters of the farm basin thereby reclaiming 25,000 acres of marshland for cultivation and providing a vast reservoir for irrigation great canals were constructed some from the Nile to the Red Sea the caisson was used for digging and obelisks weighing a thousand tons were transported over great distances if we make creditor auditors or judge from later undertakings of the same kind represented in the release of the 18th dynasty these immense stones were drawn on greased beams by thousands of slaves and raised to the desired level on inclined approaches beginning faraway machinery was rare because muscle was cheap see and one relief 800 rowers in 27 boats dragging a barge laden with two obelisks this is the Eden to which our romantic machine records would return ships a hundred feet long by half a hundred feet wide plied the Nile in the Red Sea and finally sailed the Mediterranean on land goods were transported by human muscle later by donkeys later by the horse which probably the Hyksos brought to Egypt the camel did not appear till Ptolemaic days the poor man walked or paddled his simple boat the rich man rode in sedan chairs carried by slaves or later in chariots clumsily made with the weight placed entirely in front of the axle there was a regular postal service an ancient papyrus says write to me by the letter carrier communication however was difficult roads were few and bad except for the military highway through Gaza to the Euphrates and the serpentine form of the Nile which was the main high road of Egypt doubled the distance from town to town trade was comparatively primitive most of it was by barter and village bazaars foreign commerce grew slowly restricted severely most up-to-date tariff walls the various kingdoms of the Near East believed strongly in the protective principle for customs Jews were a mainstay of their royal Treasuries nevertheless Egypt grew rich by importing raw materials and exporting finished products Syrian and Cypriot merchants crowded the markets of Egypt and Phoenician galleys sailed up the Nile to the busy wharves of Thebes coinage had not yet developed payments even of the highest salaries were made in goods corn bread yeast beer etc taxes were collected in kind and the Pharaohs Treasuries were not a mint of money but storehouses of a thousand products from the fields and shops after the influx of precious metals that followed the conquests of Thomas the third merchants began to pay for goods with rings or ingots of gold measured by weight at every transaction but no coins of definite value guaranteed by the state arose to facilitate exchange credit however was highly developed written transfers frequently took the place of barter or payment scribes were busy everywhere accelerating business with legal documents of exchange accounting and finance every visitor to the Louvre has seen the statue of the Egyptian scribe squatting on his haunches almost completely nude dressed with a pen behind the ears reserved for the one he holds in his hand he keeps record of work done in goods paid of prices and costs of profits and laws he counts the capital as they moved to the slaughter or corn as it is measured out in sale he draws up contracts and wills and makes out his masters income tax verily there is nothing new Under the Sun he essentially attentive and mechanically industrious he has just enough intelligence not to be dangerous his life is monotonous but he Consol's himself by writing essays and the hardships of the manual workers existence and the princely dignity of those whose food is paper and whose blood is ink three government the bureaucrats law the Vizier the pharaoh with these scribes is a clerical bureaucracy the pharaoh and the provincial nobles maintained law and order in the state ancient slabs show such clerks taking the census and examining income tax returns through Nayla meters that measured the rise of the river the scribe officials forecast of the harvest and estimated the government's future revenue they allotted appropriations in advance to governmental departments supervise industry and trade and in some measure achieved almost at the outset of history a planned economy regulated by the state civil and criminal legislation were highly developed and already in the fifth dynasty the law of private property and the quest was intricate and precise as in our own days there was absolute equality before the law whenever the contesting parties had equal resources and influence the oldest legal document in the world is a brief in the British Museum presenting to the court a complex case in inheritance judges required cases to be pled and answered re argued and rebutted not an oratory but in writing which compares favorably with our windy litigation perjury was punished with death there were regular courts rising from local judgment seats in the nomes to supreme courts at Memphis Thebes or Heliopolis torture was used occasionally as a midwife to truth beating with the rod was a frequent punishment mutilation by cutting off nose or ears hand or tongue was sometimes resorted to or exiled to the mines or death by strangling and paling beheading or burning at the stake the extreme penalty was to be embalmed alive to be eaten slowly by an inescapable coating of corrosive Natron criminals of high rank received the shame of public execution by being permitted to kill themselves and seen Samurai Japan we find no signs of any system of police even the standing army always small because of Egypt's protected isolation between deserts and seas was seldom used for internal discipline security of life and property in the continuity of law and government rested almost entirely on the prestige of the Pharaoh maintained by the schools in the church no other nation except China has ever dared to depend so largely upon psychological discipline it was a well-organized government with a better record of duration than any other in history at the head of the administration was the Vizier who served at once as Prime Minister Chief Justice and head of the Treasury he was the court of last resort under the Pharaoh himself a tomb relief shows us the Vizier leaving his house early in the morning to hear the petitions of the poor to hear as the inscription reads what the people say in their demand and to make no distinction between small and great a remarkable papyrus roll which comes down to us from the days of the empire purports to be the form of a dress perhaps it is but a literary invention with which the Pharaoh installed the new Vizier look to the office of the busier be watchful over all that is done therein behold it is the established support of the whole and the Vizier it is not sweet in his bitter behold it is not to show respect of persons to princes and counsellors it is not to make for himself slaves of any people behold when a petitioner comes from upper or lower egypt see thou to it that everything is done in accordance with law that everything is done according to the custom thereof giving to every man his right it is an abomination of the God to show partiality look upon him who is known to thee like him who is unknown to thee and him who is near the king like him who is far from his house behold the prince who does this he shall endure here in this place the dread of a prince is that he does justice behold the regulation that is laid upon thee the Pharaoh himself was the supreme court any case might under certain circumstances be brought to him if the plaintiff was careless of expense ancient carvings show us the great house from which he ruled and in which the offices of the government were gathered from this great house which the Egyptians called pero in which the Jews translated Pharaoh came the title of the Emperor here he carried on an arduous routine of executive work sometimes with a schedule as rigorous as chandragupta's louis xiv or napoleon's when he traveled the nobles met him at the feudal frontiers escorted and entertained him and gave him presents proportionate to their expectations one Lord says a proud inscription gave to amenhotep ii carriages of silver and gold statues of ivory and ebony jewels weapons and works of art 680 shields 140 bronze daggers and many vows of precious metal the Pharaoh reciprocated by taking one of the Barons sons to live with him at court a subtle way of exacting a hostage of fidelity the oldest of the courtiers constituted a council of elders called Saru or the great ones who served as an advisory cabin to the king such council was in a sense superfluous for the Pharaoh with the help of the priests assumed divine descent powers and wisdom this alliance with the gods was the secret of his prestige consequently he was greeted with forms of address always flattering sometimes astonishing as when in the story of sinew Hey a good citizen hails him Oh long living King may the golden one Hathor the goddess give life to thy nose as became so godlike a person the Pharaoh was waited upon by a variety of aides including generals launderers bleachers guardians of the Imperial wardrobe and other men of high degree 20 officials collaborated to take care of his toilet barbers who were permitted only to shave him and cut his hair hairdressers who adjusted the Royal cowl and diadem to his head manicurists who cut and polished his nails perfumers who deodorized his body blackened his eyelids with coal and reddened his cheeks and lips with Rouge one tomb in scription describes its occupant as overseer of the cosmetic box overseer of the cosmetic pencil sandal Bearer to the king doing in the matter of the Kings sandals to the satisfaction of his law so pampered he tended to degenerate and sometimes brightened his boredom by Manning the imperial barge with young women clad only in network of a large mesh the luxury of Amenhotep the third prepared for the debacle of it not on 4 morals royal incest the harem marriage the position of woman the matriarch --it in egypt sexual morality the government of the pharaohs resembled that of Napoleon even to the incest very often the King married his own sister occasionally his own daughter to preserve the purity of the royal blood it is difficult to say whether this weakened the stock certainly Egypt did not think so after several thousand years of experiment the institution of sister marriage spread among the people and as late as the 2nd century after Christ 2/3 of the citizens of Arsena we were found to be practicing the custom the words brother and sister and Egyptian poetry have the same significance as lover and beloved among ourselves in addition to his sisters the Pharaoh had an abundant harem recruited not only from captive women but from the daughters of the nobles and the gifts of foreign potentates so Amenhotep the third received from a prince of nahor inna his eldest daughter in 300 select maidens some of the nobility imitated this tiresome extravagance on a small scale adjusting their morals to their resources for the most part the common people like persons of moderate income everywhere contented themselves with monogamy family life was apparently as well ordered as wholesome in moral tone and influence as in the highest civilizations of our time divorce was rare until the decadent dynasties the husband could dismiss his wife without compensation if he detected her in adultery if he divorced her for other reasons he was required to turn over to her a substantial share of the family property the fidelity of the husband so far as we can fathom such Arcana was as painstaking as in any later culture and the position of woman was more advanced than in most countries today no people ancient or modern said max Muller has given women so high a legal status as did the inhabitants of the Nile Valley the monuments picture them eating and drinking in public going about their affairs in the streets unattended and unharmed and freely engaging in industry and trade Greek travelers accustomed to confine their Xanthippe ease narrowly were amazed at this Liberty they jogged at the henpecked husbands of Egypt and Diodorus Siculus perhaps with a twinkle in his eye reported that along the Nile obedience of the husband to the wife was required in the marriage bond a stipulation not necessary in America women held in bequeathed property in their own names one of the most ancient documents in history is the 3rd dynasty will in which the lady Neb sent transmits her lands to her children Hatshepsut and cleopatra rose to be queens and ruled and ruined like kings sometimes a cynical note is heard in the literature one ancient moralist warns his readers beware of a woman from abroad who was not known in her City look not upon her when she comes and know her not she is like the vortex of deep waters whose whirling is unfathomable the woman whose husband is far away she writes to the everyday if there is no witness with her she arises and spreads her net Oh deadly crime if one hearkens but the more characteristically Egyptian tone sounds in betar hotels instructions to his son if thou art successful and has furnished thy house and lovest the wife of thy bosom then fill her stomach and clothe her back make glad her heart during the time thou hast her for she is a field profitable to its owner if thou oppose her it will mean I ruin and the bhulok papyrus admonishes that the child with touching wisdom thou shalt never forget thy mother for she carried the long beneath her breast as a heavy burden and after thy months were accomplished she bore thee three long years she carried the upon her shoulder and gave thee her breast to thy mouth she nurtured the and took no offence from thy uncleanliness and when out didst enter school and was instructed in the writings daily she stood by the master with bread and beer from the house it is likely that this high status of woman arose from the mildly matriarchal character of Egyptian society not only was was woman ful mistress in the house but all estates descended in the female line even in late Times says Petrie the husband made over all his property and future earnings to his wife in his marriage settlement men married their sisters not because familiarity had bred romance but because they wished to enjoy the family inheritance which passed down from mother to daughter and they did not care to see this wealth give aid and comfort to strangers the powers of the wife underwent a slow diminution in the course of time perhaps through contact with the patriarchal customs of the Hyksos and through the transit of egypt from agricultural isolation and peace to imperialism and war under the Ptolemies the influence of the greeks was so great that freedom of divorce claimed in earlier times by the wife became the exclusive privilege of the husband even then however the change was accepted only by the upper classes the Egyptian commoner adhered to matriarchal waves possibly because of the mastery of woman over her own affairs infanticide was rare Theodorus thought it the peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child born to them was reared and tells us that parents guilty of infanticide were required I'll ought to hold the dead child in their arms for three days and nights families were large and children swarmed in both hubble's and palaces the well-to-do were hard put to it to keep count of their offspring even in courtship the woman usually took the initiative the love poems and letters that have come down to us are generally addressed by the lady to the man she begs for assignation --zz she presses her suit directly she formally proposes marriage oh my beautiful friend says one letter my desire is to become as thy wife the mistress of all thy possessions hence modesty as distinct from fidelity was not prominent among the Egyptians they spoke of sexual affairs with a directness alien to our late morality adorned their very temples with pictures and bar reliefs of startling anatomical candor and supplied their dead with obscene literature to amuse them in the grave blood ran warm along the Nile girls were nubile at 10 and premarital morals were free and easy one courtesan and Ptolemaic days was reputed to have built a pyramid with her savings even sodomy had its clientele dancing girls in the manner of Japan were accepted into the best male society as providers of entertainment and physical edification they dressed in diaphanous robes or contented themselves with anklets bracelets and rings evidence is a cur of religious prostitution on a small scale as late as the Roman occupation the most beautiful girl among the noble families of Thebes was chosen to be consecrated to Amman when she was too old to satisfy the gods she received an honorable discharge married and moved in the highest circles it was a civilization with different prejudices from our own five manners character games appearance cosmetics costume jewelry if we try to visualize the Egyptian character we find it difficult to distinguish between the ethics of the literature and the actual practices of life very frequently noble sentiments occur a poet for example counsels his countrymen give bread to him who has no field and create for thyself a good name forevermore and some of the elders give very laudable advice to their children a papyrus in the British Museum known to scholars as the wisdom of a Menem Opie circa 950 BC prepares a student for public office with admonitions that probably influence the author or authors of the Proverbs of Solomon be not greedy for a cubit of land and trespass not in the boundary of the widow plough the fields that thou mayest find thy needs and receive thy bread from thine own threshing floor better is a bushel which God giveth to thee than 5000 gained by transgression better is poverty in the hand of God than riches in the storehouse and better are loaves when the heart is joyous than riches in unhappiness such pious literature did not prevent the normal operation of human greed Plato described the Athenians as loving knowledge the Egyptians is loving wealth perhaps he was too patriotic in general the Egyptians were the Americans of antiquity enamoured of size given two gigantic engineering and majestic building industrious and accumulative practical even in the midst of many ultra mundane superstitions they were the arch conservatives of history the more they changed the more they remained the same through 40 centuries their artists copied the old conventions religiously they appeared to us from their monuments to have been a matter-of-fact people not given to non theological nonsense they had no sentimental regard for human life and killed with the clear conscience of nature Egyptian soldiers cut off the right hand or the phallus of a slain enemy and brought it to the proper scribe that it might be put into the record to their credit in the later dynasties the people long accustomed to internal peace and to none but distant Wars lost all military habits and qualities until at last a few Roman soldiers suffice to master all Egypt the accident that we know them chiefly from the remains in their tombs or the inscriptions on their temples has mislead us into exaggerating their solemnity we perceived from some of their sculptures and reliefs and from their burlesque stories of the gods that they had a jolly turn for humour they played many public and private games such as checkers and dice they gave many modern toys to their children like marbles bouncing balls ten pins and tops they enjoyed wrestling contests boxing matches and bullfights at feasts and recreations they were anointed by attendants were wreathed with flowers with wines and presented with gifts from the painting and the statuary we pictured them as a physically vigorous people muscular broad shouldered thin wasted full lipped and flat-footed from going unshod the upper classes are represented as fashionably slender imperiously tall with oval face sloping forehead regular features along straight nose and magnificent eyes their skin was white at Birth indicating an Asiatic rather than an African origin but rapidly darkened under the Egyptian Sun their artists idealized them in painting the men red the women yellow perhaps these colors were merely cosmetic styles the man of the people however is pictured as short and squat like the sheikh el Ballad formed by heavy toil and an unbalanced ration his features are rough his nose blunt and wide he is intelligent but coarse perhaps as in so many other instances the people and their rulers were of different races the rulers of Asiatic the people of African derivation the hair was dark sometimes curly but never woolly women bobbed their hair in the most modern mode men shaved lips and chin but consoled themselves with magnificent wigs often in order to wear these more comfortably they shaved the head even the Queen consort for example it Natanz mother Tia cut off all her hair to wear more easily the royal wig and crown it was a matter of rigid etiquette that the king should have the biggest wig according to their means they repaired the handiwork of nature with subtle cosmetic art faces were ruched lips were painted nails were colored hair and limbs were oiled even in the sculptures the Egyptian women have painted eyes those who could afford it had 7 creams and 2 kinds of Rouge put into their tombs when they died the remains abound in toilet sets mirrors razors hair curlers hairpins combs cosmetic boxes dishes and spoons made of wood ivory alabaster or bronze and designed in delightful and appropriate forms I think still survives in some of the tubes the coal that women used today for painting the eyebrows in the face is a lineal descendant of the oil used by the Egyptians it has come down to us through the Arabs whose word for it our coal has given us our word alcohol all perfumes of all sorts were used on the body and the clothes and homes were made fragrant with incense and myrrh their clothing ran through every gradation from primitive nudity to the gorgeous dress of empire days children of both sexes went about till their teens naked except for earrings and necklaces the girls however showed Abby seeming modesty by wearing a string of beads around the middle servants and peasants limited their everyday wardrobe to a loincloth under the old kingdom free men and women went naked to the navel and covered themselves from waist to knees with a short tight skirt of white linen since shame is a child of custom rather than of nature these simple garments contented the conscience as completely as Victorian petticoats and corsets or the evening dress of the contemporary American male our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time even the priests in the first dynasties were nothing but loin cloths as we see from the statue of Ron Ophir when wealth increased clothing increased the Middle Kingdom added a second and larger skirt of the first and the empire added a covering for the breasts with now and then a cape coachman and grooms took on formidable costumes and ran through the streets in full livery to clear away for the chariots of their masters women in the prosperous dynasties abandoned the tight skirt for a loose robe that passed over the shoulder and was joined in a clasp under the right breast flounces embroideries and a thousand frills appeared and fashion entered like a serpent to disturb the paradise of primitive nudity both sexes loved ornament and covered neck breasts arms wrists and ankles with jewelry as the nation fattened on the tribute of Asia and the commerce of the Mediterranean world jewelry ceased to be restricted to the aristocracy and became a passion with all classes every scribe and merchant had his seal of silver or gold every man had a ring every woman had an ornamental chain these chains as we see them in the museum's today are of infinite variety some of them two to three inches some of them five feet in length some thick and heavy some as slight and flexible as the finest Venetian lace about the time of the 18th dynasty earrings became de rigueur everyone had to have the ears pierced for them not only girls and women but boys and men men as well as women decorated their persons with bracelets and rings pendants and beads of costly stone the women of ancient Egypt could learn very little from us in the matter of cosmetics and jewelry if they were reincarnated among us today six letters education schools of government paper and ink stages in the development of writing forms of Egyptian writing the priests imparted rudimentary instruction to the children of the well-to-do when schools attached to the temples as in the Roman Catholic parishes of our age one high priest who was what we should term Minister or Secretary of Education calls himself chief of the royal stable of instruction in the ruins of a school which was apparently part of the Ramesseum a large number of shells has been found still bearing the lessons of the ancient pedagogue the teachers function was to produce scribes for the clerical work of the state to stimulate his pupils he wrote eloquent essays on the advantages of education give thy heart to learning and love her like a mother's is one edifying papyrus for there is nothing so precious as learning behold says another there is no profession that is not governed it is only the learned man who rules himself it is a misfortune to be a soldier writes an early bookworm it is a weariness to till the earth the only happiness is to turn the heart to books during the daytime and to read during the night copy books survive from the days of the Empire with the corrections of the Masters still adorning the margins the abundance of errors would console the modern schoolboy the chief method of instruction was the dictation or copying of texts which were written upon potsherds or limestone flakes the subjects were largely commercial for the Egyptians were the first and greatest utilitarians but the chief topic of pedagogics is course was virtue and the chief problem as ever was discipline do not spend our time in wishing or thou wilt come to a bad end we read in one of the coffee books let thy mouth read the book in thy hand take advice from those who know more than thou dust this last is probably one of the oldest phrases in any language discipline was vigorous and based upon the simplest principles the youth has a back says a euphemistic manuscript and attends when he is beaten for the ears of the young are placed on the back a pupil writes to his former teacher thou didst beat my back and thy instructions went into my ear that this animal training did not always succeed appears from a papyrus in which a teacher laments that his former pupils love books much less than beer nevertheless a large number of the temple students were graduated from the hands of the priests to high schools attached to the offices of the state treasury there and the first known school of government the young scribes were instructed in public administration on graduating they were apprenticed to officials who taught them through plenty of work perhaps it was a better way of securing and training public servants than our modern selection of them by popularity and subservience II and the noise of the hustings in this manner Egypt and Babylonia developed more or less simultaneously the earliest school systems in history not till the 19th century of our era was the public instruction of the young to be so well organized again in the higher grades the student was allowed to use paper one of the main items of Egyptian trade and one of the permanent gifts of Egypt to the world the stem of the papyrus plant was cut into strips other strips were placed crosswise upon these the sheet was pressed and paper the very stuff and nonsense of civilization was made how well they made it may be judged from the fact that manuscripts written by them 5,000 years ago are still intact and legible sheets were combined into books by gumming the right edge of one sheet to the left edge of the next in this way rolls were produced which were sometimes 40 yards in length they were seldom longer for there were no verbose historians in Egypt ink blackened indestructible was made by mixing water with soot and vegetable gums on a wooden pallet the pen was a simple read fashioned at the tip into a tiny brush with these modern instruments the Egyptians wrote the most ancient of literature's their language had probably come in from Asia the oldest specimens of it show many Semitic affinities the earliest writing was apparently pictographic an object was represented by drawing a picture of it for example the word for house Egyptian pear was indicated by a small rectangle with an opening on one of the long sides as some ideas were too abstract to be literally pictured picked ography passed into geography certain pictures were by custom and convention used to represent not the object pictured but the ideas suggested by them so the four part of alignment supremacy as in the Sphinx a wasp meant royalty and a tadpole stood for thousands as a further development along this line abstract ideas which had at first resisted representation were indicated by picturing objects whose names happen to resemble the spoken words that correspondent to the ideas so the picture of a lute came to me not only lute but good because the Egyptian word sound for lute Mayfair resembled the word sound for good no fair queer rebus combinations grew out of these homonyms words of like sound but different meanings since the verb to be was expressed in spoken language by the sound Co Peru described being puzzled to find a picture for so intangible a conception split the word in two parts Co P Roo expressed these by picturing in succession a sieve called in the spoken language cow a mat P and a mouth rule use and want would sanctify so many absurdities soon made this strange assortment of characters suggests the idea of being in this way the Egyptian arrived at the syllable the syllabic sign and thus elaborate that is a collection of syllabic signs and by dividing difficult words into syllables finding homonyms for these and drawing in combination the objects suggested by these syllabic sounds he was able in the course of time to make the hieroglyphic signs convey almost any idea only one step remained to invent letters the sign for a house meant at first the word for house pair then it meant the sound pair or p r with any vowel in between as a syllable in any word then the picture was shortened and used to represent the sound puh-puh-puh pay or p in any word and since vowels were never written this was equivalent to having a character for the letter P by a light development the sign for a hand Egyptian dote came to mean Dada etcetera and finally the letter the sign for mouth row or rule came to mean the letter R the sign for snake Z T it became the letter Z the sign for Lake she SH Y became SH the result was an alphabet of 24 consonants which passed the Egyptian and Phoenician trade to all quarters of the Mediterranean and came down via Greece and Rome as one of the most precious parts of our oriental heritage hieroglyphics are as old as the earliest dynasties alphabetic characters appear first in inscriptions left by the Egyptians in the mines of the Sinai Peninsula variously dated at 2500 and 1500 BC whether wisely or not the Egyptians never adopted a completely alphabetic writing like modern stenographers they mingled pictographs ideographs and syllabic signs with their letters to the very end of their civilization this has made it difficult for scholars to read Egyptian but it is quite conceivable that such a medley of longhand and shorthand facilitated the business of writing for those Egyptians who could spare the time to learn it since English speech is no honourable guide to English spelling it is probably as difficult for a contemporary lad to learn the devious ways of English orthography as it was for the Egyptian scribe to memorize by use the 500 hieroglyphs there's secondary syllabic meanings and their tertiary alphabetic uses in the course of time a more rapid and sketchy form of writing was developed for manuscripts as distinguished from the careful sacred carvings of the monuments since this corruption of hieroglyphic was first made by the priests and the temple scribes it was called by the Greeks higher attic but it soon passed into common use for public commercial and private documents a still more abbreviated in careless form of this script was developed by the common people and therefore came to be known as demotic on the monuments however the Egyptian insisted on having his lordly and lovely hieroglyphic perhaps the most picturesque form of writing ever made seven literature texts and libraries the Egyptian Sinbad the story of sinew a fiction an amorous fragment love poems history a literary revolution most of the literature that survives from me Egypt is written in higher attic script little of it remains and we are forced to estimate it from the fragments that do it only the blind justice of chance perhaps time destroyed the shakespeare's of Egypt and preserved only the Poets Laureate a great official of the Fourth Dynasty is called on his tomb scribe of the house of books we cannot tell whether this primeval library was a repository of literature or only a dusty storehouse of public records and documents the oldest extant Egyptian literature consists of the Pyramid Texts pious matter engraved on the walls in five pyramids of the 5th and 6th dynasties libraries have come down to us from as far back as 2000 BC papyri rolled and packed in jars labeled and ranged on shelves in one such jar was found the oldest form of the story of Sinbad the sailor or as we might rather call it Robinson Crusoe the story of the shipwrecked sailor is a simple autobiographical fragment full of life and feeling how glad is he says this Ancient Mariner and a line reminiscent of Dante that related what he had experienced when the calamity has passed I will relate to these something that was experienced by me myself when I had set out for the mines of the sovereign and had gone down to the sea in a ship of 180 feet in length and 60 feet in breadth and therein were 120 sailors of the Pick of Egypt they scanned the sky they scanned the earth and their hearts were more than those of lions they foretold a storm wherever it came and a tempest when as yet it was not a storm burst while we were yet at sea we flew before the wind and it made a wave eight cubits high then the ship perished and of them that were in it not one survived and I was cast onto an island by a wave of the sea and I spent three days alone with mine heart as my companion I slept under the shelter of a tree and embraced the shade then I stretched forth my feet in order to find out what I could put into my mouth I found figs and vines there and all manner of fine leeks they were fished there and fowl and there was nothing that was not in it when I had made me a fire drill I kindled the fire and made a burnt offering for the gods another tale recounts the adventures of sinawe a public official who flees from Egypt at the death of Ammon Emmet the first wanders from country to country of the Near East and despite prosperity and honors there suffers unbearably from lonesomeness for his native land at last he gives up riches and makes his way through many hardships back to Egypt o God whosoever thou art that didst ordain this flight bring you again to the house that is the pharaoh peradventure thou wilt suffer me to see the place where in mine heart dwelleth what is a greater matter than that my corpse should be buried in the land where and I was born come to mine aid may good before may God show me mercy in the sequel we find him home again weary and dusty with many miles of desert travel and fearful lest the Pharaoh reprove him for his long absence from a land which like all others looked upon itself as the only civilized country in the world but the Pharaoh forgives him and extends to him every cosmetic courtesy I was placed in the house of a king's son in which there was noble equipment and a bath was there in years were made to pass away from my body I was shaved and my hair was combed a load of dirt was given over to the desert and the filthy clothes to the sand ferrars and I was arrayed in finest linen and anointed with the best oil short stories are diverse and plentiful in the fragments that have come down to us of Egyptian literature there are marvellous tales of ghosts miracles and other fascinating concoctions as credible as the detective stories that satisfy modern statesmen there are high sounding romances of princes and princesses kings and queens including the oldest known form of the tale of Cinderella her exquisite foot there wandering slipper and her royal Himani old a new mall there are fables of animals illustrating by their conduct the foibles and passions of humanity and pointing morals sagely a kind of premonitory plagiarism from ESOP and Lafon 10 typical of the egyptian mingling of natural and supernatural is the tale of a new pool and vtu older and younger brothers who live happily on their farm until a new Pooh's wife falls in love with BTU is repulsed by him and revenge's herself by accusing him to his brother of having offered her violence gods and crocodiles come to BTUs aid against a new poo but BTU disgusted with mankind mutilates himself to prove his innocence retires time and light to the woods and places his heart unreachable high on the topmost flower of a tree the gods pitying his loneliness create for him a wife of such beauty that the nile falls in love with her and steals a lock of her hair drifting down the stream the lock is found by the Pharaoh who intoxicated by its scent commands his henchmen to find the owner she is found and brought to him and he marries her jealous of Btu he sends men to cut down the tree on which Beatty has placed his heart the tree is cut down and as the flower touches the earth Beatty dies how little the taste of our ancestors different from our own the early literature of the Egyptians is largely religious and the oldest Egyptian poems are the hymns of the Pyramid Texts their form is also the most ancient poetic form known to us that parallelism of members or repetition of the thought in different phrase which the Hebrew poets adopted from the Egyptians and Babylonians and immortalized in the Psalms as the old passes into the Middle Kingdom the literature tends to become secular and profane we catch some glimpse of a lost body of amorous literature and a fragment preserved to us through the laziness of a Middle Kingdom scribe who did not complete his task of wiping clear and old papyrus but left legible some 25 lines the television portions encounter with the goddess this goddess says the story met with him as he wended his way to the pool and she had stripped off her clothes and disarrayed her hair the Shepherd reports the matter cautiously behold ye when I went down to the swamp I saw a woman therein and she looked not like a mortal being my hair stood on end when I saw her tresses because her colour was so bright never will I do what she said all of her is in my body the love songs abound in number and beauty but as they celebrate chiefly the amours of brothers and sisters they will shock or amuse the modern year one collection is called the beautiful joyous songs of thy sister whom thy heart loves who walks in the fields an austere Khan or shel dating back to the 19th or 20th dynasty plays a modern theme on the ancient chords of desire the love of my beloved leaps on the bank of the stream a crocodile lies in the shadows yet I go down into the water and breasts the wave my courage is high on the stream and the water is as land to my feet it is her love that makes me strong she is a book of spells to me when I behold my beloved coming my heart is glad my arms are spread apart to embrace her my heart rejoices forever since my beloved came when I embrace her I am as one who is an incensed land as one who carries perfumes when I kiss her her lips are opened and I am made merry without beer would that I were her slave who is an attendance on her so should i behold the hue of all her limbs the lines have been arbitrarily divided here we cannot tell from the external form of the original that it is verse the Egyptians knew that music and feeling are the twin essences of poetry if these were present the outward shape did not matter often however the rhythm was accentuated as we have seen by parallelism of members sometimes the poet used the device of beginning every sentence or stanza with the same word sometimes he played like a punster with like sounds meaning unlike or incongruous things it is clear from the texts that the trick of alliteration is as old as the pyramids these simple forms were enough with them the Egyptian poet could express almost every shade of that romantic love which Nietzsche supposed was an invention of the troubadours the harris papyrus shows that such sentiments could be expressed by a woman as well as by a man I am my first sister and thou art to me is the garden which I have planted with flowers and all sweet-smelling herbs I directed the canal into it that thou mightst if thy hand into it when the north wind blows cool the beautiful place where we take a walk when thy hand rests within mine with thoughtful mind and joyous heart because we walk together it is intoxicating to me to hear thy voice and my life depends upon hearing thee whenever I see thee it is better to me than food or drink all in all it is astonishing how varied the fragments are formal letters legal documents historical narratives magic formulas laborious hymns book devotion songs of love and war romantic novelettes moral exhortations philosophical treatises everything is represented here except epic and drama and even of these one might by stretching a point find instances the story of Rama sees the seconds dashing victories engraved patiently and verse upon brick after brick of the great pylon at Luxor is epic at least in length and dullness in another inscription Rama sees the fourth boasts that in a play he had defended a Cyrus from set and had recalled Osiris to life our knowledge does not allow us to amplify this hint historiography in Egypt is as old as history even the kings of the pre-dynastic period kept historical records proudly official historians accompanied the pharaohs on their expeditions never saw their defeats and recorded or invented the details of their victories already the writing of history had become a cosmetic art as far back as 2500 BC Egyptian scholars made lists of their kings named the years from them and chronicled the outstanding events of each year and reign by the time of tutmes the third these documents became full-fledged histories eloquent with patriotic emotion Egyptian philosophers of the Middle Kingdom thought both man and history old and defeat and mourn the lusty youth of their race Kika Paris and boo a savant of the reign of cenis rat ii about 21 150 bc complained that all things had long since been said and nothing remained for literature except repetition would he cried unhappily that i had words that are unknown utterances and sayings a new language that has not yet passed away and without that which have been said repeatedly not an utterance that if grown stale what the ancestors have already said distance blurs for us the variety and changefulness of egyptian literature as it blurs the individual differences of unfamiliar peoples nevertheless in the course of its long development Egyptian letters passed through movements and moods as varied as those that have disturbed the history of European literature as in Europe so in Egypt the language of everyday speech diverged gradually at last almost completely from that in which the books of the Old Kingdom had been written for a long time authors continued to compose in the ancient tongue scholars acquired it in school and students were compelled to translate the classics with the help of grammars and vocabularies and with the occasional assistance of interlinear x' in the 14th century BC Egyptian authors rebelled against this bondage to tradition and like Dante and Chaucer dared to write in the language of the people hick Natanz famous hymn to the Sun is itself composed in the popular speech the new literature was realistic youthful buoyant it took delight in flouting the old forms and describing the new life in time this language also became literary informal refined and precise rigid and impeccable with conventions of word and phrase once again the language of letters separated from the language of speech and scholasticism flourished the schools of say it-- Egypt spent half their time studying and translating the classics of ignite on stay similar transformations of the native tongue went on under the Greeks under the Romans under the Arabs another is going on today font array all things flow only scholars never change eight science origins of Egyptian science mathematics astronomy and the calendar anatomy and physiology medicine surgery and hygiene the scholars of Egypt were mostly priests enjoying far from the turmoil of life the comfort and security of the temples and it was these priests who despite all their superstitions laid the foundations of Egyptian science according to their own legends the sciences had been invented some eighteen thousand BC by Thoth the Egyptian god of wisdom during his 3,000 year long reign on earth and the most ancient books in each science were among the twenty thousand volumes composed by this learner deity our knowledge does not permit us to improve substantially upon this theory of the origins of science in Egypt at the very outset of recorded Egyptian history we find mathematics highly developed the design and construction of the pyramids involved a precision of measurement impossible without considerable mathematical lore the dependence of Egyptian life upon the fluctuations of the Nile led to careful records and calculations of the rise and recession of the river surveyors and scribes were continually remeasuring the land whose boundaries had been a obliterated by the inundation and this measuring of the land was evidently the origin of geometry nearly all the ancients agreed in ascribing the invention of this science to the Egyptians Josephus however thought that Abraham had brought arithmetic from Chaldea that is Mesopotamia to Egypt and it is not impossible that this and other arts came to Egypt from war of the Col deze or some other center of Western Asia the figures used were cumbersome one stroke for one two strokes four to nine strokes for nine with a new sign for ten to ten signs stood for twenty three ten signs for thirty nine for ninety with a new sign for one hundred to one hundred signs stood for two hundred three 100 signs for three hundred nine for nine hundred with the new sign for a thousand the sign for a million was a picture of a man striking his hands above his head as if to express amazement that such a number should exist the Egyptians felt just short of the decimal system they had no zero and never reached the idea of expressing all numbers with ten digits for example they used twenty seven signs to write 999 they had fractions but always with the numerator one to express three-quarters they wrote 1/2 plus 1/4 multiplication and division tables are as old as the pyramids the oldest mathematical treatise known as the Army's papyrus dating back to 2,000 to 1700 BC but this in turn refers to mathematical writings 500 years more ancient than itself it illustrates by examples the computation of the capacity of a barn or the area of a field and passes to algebraic equations of the first degree Egyptian geometry measured not only the area of squares circles and cubes but also the cubic content of cylinders and spheres and it arrived at 3.16 as the value of pi we enjoy the honor of having advanced from 3.16 to 3.1416 in 4,000 years of egyptian physics and chemistry we know nothing and almost as little of Egyptian astronomers the stargazers of the temples seem to have conceived the earth as a rectangular box with mountains at the corners upholding the sky they made no note of eclipses and were in general less advanced in their Mesopotamian contemporaries nevertheless they knew enough to predict the day on which the Nile would rise and to orient their temples toward that point on the horizon where the Sun would appear on the morning of the summer solstice perhaps they knew more than they cared to publish among a people whose superstitions were so precious to their rulers the priests regarded their astronomical studies as an esoteric and mysterious science which they were reluctant to disclose to the common world for century after century they kept track of the position and movements of the planets until their records stretched back for thousands of years they distinguished between planets and fixed stars noted in their catalogues stars of the 5th magnitude practically invisible to the unaided eye and charted what they thought were the astral influences of the heavens on the fortunes of men from these observations they built the calendar which was to be another of Egypt's greatest gifts to mankind they began by dividing the year into three seasons of four months each first the rise overflow and recession of the Nile second the period of cultivation and third the period of harvesting to each of these months they assigned 30 days as being the most convenient approximation to the lunar month of 29 and a half days their word for month like ours was derived from their symbol for the moon at the end of the 12th month they added five days to bring the year into harmony with the river and the Sun as the beginning of their year they chose the day on which the Nile usually reached its height and on which originally the great star Sirius which they called Sothis Rhodes simultaneously with the Sun since their calendar allowed only 365 instead of 365 and a quarter days to a year this Haleakala Sirius that is its appearance just before sunrise after having been invisible for a number of days came a day later every four years and in this way the Egyptian calendar diverged by six hours annually from the actual calendar of the sky the Egyptians never corrected this error many years later 46 BC the Greek astronomers of Alexandria by direction of Julius Caesar improved this calendar by adding an extra day every fourth year this was the Julian calendar under Pope Gregory the thirteenth 1582 a more accurate correction was made by omitting this extra day february 29th in century years not divisible by 400 this is the Gregorian calendar that we use today our calendar is essentially the creation of the ancient Near East since the Alaia coryza of Sirius occurred one day later every four years than the Egyptian calendar demanded the error amounted to 365 days in 1460 years on the completion of this so thick cycle as the Egyptians called it the paper calendar and the celestial calendar again agreed since we know from the Latin authors censorious that the Alaia coryza of sirius coincided in 139 ad with the beginning of the Egyptian calendar year we may presume that a similar coincidence occurred every fourteen hundred sixty years previously that is in 1321 BC 2781 BC 4241 BC etc and since the Egyptian calendar was apparently established in a year when the Hylian of Sirius took place on the first day of the first month we conclude that that calendar came into operation in a year that opened the so thick cycle the earliest mention of the Egyptian calendar is in the religious texts inscribed in the pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty since this dynasty is unquestionably earlier than 1321 BC the calender must have been established in 27 81 BC or 40 241 BC or still earlier the older date once acclaimed as the first definite date in history has been disputed by professor sharp and it is possible that we shall have to accept 27 81 bc as the approximate birth year of the egyptian calendar this would require a foreshortening by three or four hundred years of the dates assigned above for the early dynasties and the great pyramids as the matter is very much in dispute the chronology of the Cambridge ancient history has been adopted in these pages despite the opportunities offered by embalming the Egyptians made relatively poor progress in the study of the human body they thought that the blood vessels carried air what and excretory fluids and they believed the heart and bowels to be the seed of the mind perhaps if we knew what they meant by these terms we should find them not so divergent from our own ephemeral certainties they described with general accuracy the larger bones and viscera and recognized the function of the heart as the driving power of the organism in the center of the circulatory system its vessels says the Ebers papyrus lead to all the members whether the doctor lays his finger on the forehead on the back of the head on their hands or on the feet everywhere he meets with the heart from this to Leonardo and harvey was but a step which took three thousand years the glory of Egyptian science was medicine like almost everything else in the cultural life of Egypt it began with the priests and dripped with evidences of its magical origins among the people amulets were more popular than pills as preventive or curative of disease disease was to them a possession by Devils and was to be treated with incantations a cold for instance could be exercised by such magic words as depart cold Sun of a cold thou who break us the bones destroy us the skull make us still the seven openings of the head go out on the floor stink stink stink a cure probably as effective as contemporary remedies for this ancient disease from such depths we rise in Egypt two great physicians surgeons and specialists who acknowledged an ethical code that passed down into the famous Hippocratic oath some of them specialized in obstetrics or gynecology some treated only gastric disorders some were oculist's so internationally famous that cyrus sent for one of them to come to persia the general practitioner was left to gather the crumbs and heal the poor in addition to which he was expected to provide cosmetics hair dyes skin culture limb beautification and flea exterminators several papyri devoted to medicine have come down to us the most valuable of them named from the edwin smith who discovered it is a roll fifteen feet long dating about 1600 bc and going back for its sources to much earlier works even in its extant form it is the oldest scientific document known to history it describes 48 in clinical surgery from cranial fractures to injuries of the spine each case is treated in logical order under the heads of provisional diagnosis examination see my ology diagnosis prognosis treatment and glosses on the terms used the author notes with the clarity unrivaled to the 18th century of our era that control of the lower limbs is localized in the brain a word which here appears for the first time in literature the Egyptians enjoyed a great variety of diseases though they had to dive them without knowing their Greek names the mummies and papyri tell of spinal tuberculosis arteriosclerosis gall stones smallpox infantile paralysis anemia rheumatic arthritis epilepsy gout mastoid itis appendicitis and such marvelous affections as spondylitis deform ins and achondroplasia there are no signs of syphilis or cancer but pyuria and dental caries absent in the oldest mummies become frequent in the later ones indicating the progress of civilization the atrophy infusion of the bones of the small toe often ascribed to the modern shoe was common in ancient Egypt where nearly all ages and ranks went barefoot against these diseases the Egyptian doctors were armed with an abundant pharmacopoeia the Ebers papyrus lists 700 remedies for everything from snakebite to peripheral fever the Cahoon virus circa 1850 BC prescribes suppositories apparently used for contraception the tomb of an eleventh dynasty Queen revealed a medicine chest containing Voss's spoons dried drugs and roots prescriptions hovered between medicine and magic and relied for their effectiveness in great part on the repulsiveness of the concoction lizard's blood swine's ears and teeth putrid meat and fat a tortoises brains an old book boiled in oil the milk of a lying-in woman the water of a chaste woman the excreta of men donkeys dogs lions cats and lice all these are found in the prescriptions baldness was treated by rubbing the head with animal fat some of these cures passed from the egyptians to the greeks the Greeks to the Romans and from the Romans to us we still swallow trustfully the strange mixtures that were brewed 4000 years ago on the banks of the Nile the Egyptians tried to promote health by public sanitation excavations reveal arrangements for the collection of rainwater and the disposal of sewage by a system of copper pipes by circumcision of males even the earliest tombs give evidence of this practice and by teaching the people the frequent use of the enema dye odorous Siculus tells us in order to prevent sicknesses they look after the health of their body by means of drenches fastings and emetics sometimes everyday and sometimes at intervals of three or four days for they say that the larger part of the food taken into the body is superfluous and that it is from this superfluous part that diseases are engendered so old is the modern saw that we live on one-fourth of what we eat and the doctors live on the rest plen'y believed that this habit of taking enemas was learned by the Egyptians from observing the Ibis a bird that counteracts the constipation character of its food by using its long bill is a rectal syringe Herodotus reports that the Egyptians purge themselves every month three days successively seeking to preserve health by emetics and enemas for they suppose that all diseases to which men are subject proceed from the food they use and this first historian of civilization ranks the Egyptians as next to the Libyans the healthiest people in the world nine art architecture Old Kingdom Middle Kingdom Empire and say I'd sculpture bar relief painting minor arts music the artists the greatest element in the civilization was its art here almost at the threshold of history we find an art powerful and mature superior to that of any modern nation and equaled only by that of Greece at first the luxury of isolation in peace and then undertook most the third and ramasees the second the spoils of oppression and war gave to Egypt the opportunity in the means for massive architecture masculine statuary and a hundred minor arts that so early touched perfection the whole theory Progress hesitates before Egyptian art architecture was the noblest of the ancient arts because it combined an imposing form mass and duration beauty and use it began humbly in the adornment of tombs and the external decoration of homes dwellings were mostly of mud and here and there some pretty woodwork a Japanese lattice a well carved portal and a roof strengthened with the tough and pliable trunks of the palm around the house normally was a wall enclosing a court from the court steps led to the roof from this the tenants passed down into the rooms the well-to-do had private gardens carefully landscaped the cities provided public gardens for the poor and hardly a home but had its ornament of flowers inside the house the walls were hung with colored matting's and the floors if the master could afford it were covered with rugs people sat on these rugs rather than on chairs the Egyptians of the old kingdoms squatted for their meals at tables 6 inches high in the fashion of the Japanese and ate with their fingers like Shakespeare under the Empire when slaves were cheap the upper classes sat on high cushioned chairs and had their servants hand them course after course stone for building was too costly for homes it was a luxury reserved for priests and kings even the nobles ambitious though they were left the greatest wealth and the best building materials to the temples in consequence the palaces that overlooked almost every mile of the river in the days of Amenhotep the third crumbled into oblivion while the abodes of the gods and the tombs of the dead remained by the 12th dynasty the pyramid it ceased to be the fashionable form of sepulture kinoma hotel circa 21 80 BC shows at Beni Hasan the quieter form of a colonnade built into the mountainside and this theme once established played a thousand variations among the hills on the western slope of the Nile from the time of the pyramids to the temple of hathor at Dendera that is for some 3,000 years there rose out of the sands of Egypt such a succession of architectural achievements as no civilisation has ever surpassed at Karnak and Luxor a riot of columns raised by Tut most the 1st and 3rd Amenhotep the 3rd SETI the first Brahma seized the second and other monarchs from the 12th to the 22nd dynasty at medinet habu circa 1300 BC a vast but less distinguished edifice on whose columns an Arab village rested for centuries at Abydos the temple of seti the first dark and somber in its massive ruins at elephant tiny the little Temple of Doom circa 1400 BC positively greeked in its precision and elegance at Deir el-bahri the stately colonnades of queen hatshepsut near at the Ramesseum another forest of colossal columns and statues reared by the architects and slaves of ramses ii at philae the lovely temple of isis circa 240 BC desolate and abandoned now that the damming of the Nile at Aswan has submerged the basis of its perfect columns these are sample fragments of the many monuments that still adorn the valley of the Nile and attest even in their ruins the strength and courage of the race that reared them here perhaps is a nexus of pillars a crowding of columns against the tyranny of the Sun a far-eastern aversion to symmetry a lack of unity a barbaric modern adoration of Sighs but here to our grandeur sublimity majesty and power here are the arch and the vault used sparingly because not needed but ready to pass on their principles to Greece and Rome and modern Europe here are decorative designs never surpassed here are the PI reformed columns low deform columns proto Doric columns Caryatid columns Hathor capitals palm capitals Clare stories and magnificent architraves full of the strength and stability that are the very soul of architectures powerful appeal the Egyptians were the greatest builders in history some would add that they were also the greatest sculptors here at the outset is the Sphynx conveying by its symbolism the leonine quality of some masterful Pharaoh perhaps calf for a Catherine it has not only size as some of thought but character the cannon shot of the mammal ooks have broken the nose and showing the beard but nevertheless those gigantic features portray with impressive skill the force and dignity the calm and skeptic maturity of a natural king across those motionless features a subtle smile is hovered for five thousand years as if already the unknown artist or monarch had understood all that men would ever understand about men it is a Mona Lisa in stone there is nothing finer in the history of sculpture than the diorite statue of Khafre in the Cairo Museum as ancient to prax italy's as prax italy's to us it nevertheless comes down across 50 centuries almost unhurt by times rough usages cut in the most intractable of stones it passes on to us completely the strength and authority the willfulness and courage the sensitivity and intelligence of the artist or the king near it and even older ferrozzo sir sits pouting in limestone farther on the guide with lighted match reveals the transparency of an alabaster mint calorie quite as perfect in artistry as these portraits of royalty are the figures of the Sheikh El Bella din the scribe the scribe has come down to us in many forms all of uncertain antiquity the most illustrious is the squatting scribe of the Louvre the Sheikh is no Sheikh but only an overseer of labour armed with the staff of authority and stepping forward as if in supervision or command his name apparently was scar Peru but the Arab workmen who rescued him from his tomb at saqqara were struck with his resemblance to the sheikh el ballad that is the mayor of the village under whom they lived and this title which their good humour gave him is now inseparable from his fame he is carved only in mortal wood but time has not seriously reduced his portly figure or his chubby legs his waistline has all the amplitude of the comfortable bourgeois in every civilization his rotund face beams with the content of a man who knows his place and glories in it the bald head and carelessly loosened robe display the realism of an art already old enough to rebel against idealization but here too is a fine simplicity a complete humanity expressed without bitterness and with the ease and grace of a practiced and confident hand if says ma sparrows some exhibition of the world's masterpiece were to be inaugurated I should choose this work to uphold the honor of Egyptian art or would that honor arrest more securely on the head of Khafre these are the chef's d'oeuvre of Old Kingdom statuary but lesser masterpieces abound the seated portraits of rah hotep and his wife nor it the powerful figure of rah no fair the priests the copper statues of King Phi ups and his son a falcon head in gold the humorous figures of the beer brewer and the dwarf can M hotep all but one in the Cairo Museum all without exception instinct with character it is true that the earlier pieces are coarse and crude that by a strange convention running throughout Egyptian art figures are shown with the body and eyes facing forward but the hands and feet in profile that not much attention was given to the body which was left in most cases stereotyped and unreal all female bodies young or royal bodies strong and that individualization though masterly was generally reserved for the head there are important exceptions to this for example the sheikh el Belen and the scribe obviously the convention was not due to incapacity or ignorant but with all the stiffness and sameness that priestly conventions in control forced upon statuary paintings and reliefs these works were fully redeemed by the power and depth of the conception the vigor and precision of the execution the character line and finish of the product never was sculpture more alive the Sheikh exudes Authority the woman grinding grain gives every sense and muscle to her work the scribe is on the very verge of writing and the thousand little puppets placed in the tombs to carry on essential industries for the dead were molded with a like vivacity so that we can almost believe with the pious Egyptian that the deceased could not be unhappy while these minister ants were there not for many centuries to the Egyptian sculpture equal again the achievements of the early dynasties because most of the statuary was made for the temples of the tombs the priests determined to a great degree what forms the artists should follow and the natural conservatism of religion crept into art slowly stifled sculpture into a conventional stylistic degeneration under the powerful monarchs of the 12th dynasty the secular spirit reasserted itself and art recaptured something of its old vigor and more than its old skill ahead of a man Emmet the third in black diorite suggests at once the recovery of character and the recovery of art here is the quiet hardness of an able King carved with the competence of a master a colossal statue of sinister at the third is crowned with a head and face equal and conception and execution to any portrait in the history of sculpture and the ruined torso of sinners right the first in the Cairo Museum ranks with the torso of Hercules in the Louvre animal figures abound in the Egyptian sculpture of every age and are always full of humor and life here is a mouse chewing a nut an ape devotedly strumming a harp a porcupine with every spine on the key vivre then came the Shepherd Kings and for 300 years Egyptian art almost ceased to be in the Age of hatshepsut the Thomases the Amenhotep s-- and the ramasees art underwent a second resurrection along the Nile wealth poured in from subject Syria passed into the temples and the courts and trickled through them to nourish every art colossi of thomas the third and ramasees ii began to challenge the sky statuary crowded every corner of the temples masterpieces were flung forth with unprecedented abundance by a race exhilarated with what they thought was world supremacy the fine granite bust of the great Queen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York the basalt statue of toughness the third in the Cairo Museum the Lions Fink's serve Amenhotep the third in the British Museum the limestone seated Ignat on in the Louvre the granite statue of Ramses the second in Turin the perfect crouching figure of the same incredible monarch making an offering to the gods the meditative cow of Deir el-bahri which ma Sparrow considered equal if not superior to the best achievements of Greece and Rome in this genre the two lions of Amenhotep the third which Ruskin ranked is the best animal statuary surviving from antiquity the sigh cut into the rocks at Abu Simbel by the sculptors of ramasees ii the amazing remains found among the ruins of the artists Thomas's studio at tell el-amarna a plaster model of Ethne Tom's head full of the mysticism and poetry of that tragic king the lovely limestone bust of if not dance Queen Nefertiti and the even finer sandstone head of the same fair lady these scattered examples may illustrate the sculptural accomplishments of this abounding Empire age amid all these lofty masterpieces humour continues to find place Egyptian sculptors frolic with jolly caricatures of men and animals and even the kings and queens in it Natanz iconoclastic age are made to smile and play after ramasees ii this magnificence passed rapidly away for many centuries after him art contented itself with repeating traditional works and forms under the say eyed kings it sought to rejuvenate itself by returning to the simplicity and sincerity of the old kingdom masters sculptors attacked bravely the hardest stones basalt breccia serpentine diorite and carved them into such realistic portraits as that of one Touma height and the green basalt head of a bald unknown now looking out blackly upon the walls of the State Museum at Berlin in bronze they cast the lovely figure of the lady Tycho shet again they delighted in catching the actual features and movements of men and beasts they moulded laughable figures of quaint animals slaves and gods and they formed in bronze a cat and a goat's head which are among the trophies of Berlin then the Persians came down like a wolf on the fold conquered Egypt desecrated its temples broke its spirit and put an end to its art these architecture and sculpture are the major Egyptian arts but if abundance counted bar relief would have to be added to them no other people so tirelessly carved its history or legends upon its walls at first we are shocked by the dull similarity of these glyph dick narratives the crowded confusion the absence of proportion and perspective or the Gailey attempt to achieve this by representing the far above the near we are surprised to see how tall the Faro is and how small are his enemies and as in the sculpture we find it hard to adjust our pictorial habits to eyes and breasts that face us boldly while noses chins and feet turned coldly away but then we find ourselves caught by the perfect line and grace of the fall cannon serpent carved on King Rena fesses tomb by the limestone reliefs of King Djoser on the Step Pyramid at Saqqara by the wood relief of princess IRA from his grave in the same locality and by the wounded Libyan on a 5th dynasty tomb at aboo-seer a patient study of muscles taught in pain at last we bear with equanimity the long reliefs that tell how tough must the third and ramasees the second carried all before them we recognised the perfection of flowing line in the reliefs carved for SETI the first at Abydos and Karnak and we follow with interest the picturesque engravings were in the sculptors of hatshepsut tell on the walls of deir el-bahri the story of the expedition sent by her to the mysterious Land of Punt Somaliland we see the long ships with full spread sail and Sarah doors heading south amid waters alive with octopi Crustacea and other toilers of the sea we watched the fleet arriving on the shores of punt welcomed by a startled but fascinated people and King we see the sailors carrying on board a thousand loads of native delicacies we read the jest of the front workmen be careful of your feet you over there look out then we accompany the heavy laden vessels as they return northward filled the inscription tells us with the marvels of the Land of Punt all the odoriferous trees of the lands of the gods incensed evany ivory gold woods of divers kinds cosmetics for the eyes monkeys dogs Panther skins never have like things been brought back for any king from the beginning of the world the ships come through the great canal between the Red Sea and the Nile we see the expedition landing at the docks of Thebes depositing it's buried cargo at the very feet of the Queen and lastly we are shown as if after the lapse of time all these imported goods beautifying Egypt on every side ornaments of gold and ebony boxes of perfumes and unguent elephants tusks and animals hides while the trees brought back from Flint are flourishing so well on the soil of Thebes that under their branches oxen enjoy the shade it is one of the supreme reliefs in the history of art bar relief is a liaison between sculpture and painting in Egypt except during the reign of the Ptolemies and under the influence of Greece painting never rose to the status of an independent art it remained an accessory to architecture sculpture and relief the painter filled in the outlines carved by the cutting tool but their subordinate it was ubiquitous most statues were painted all surfaces were colored it is an art perilously subject to time and lacking the persistence of statuary and building very little remains to us of Old Kingdom painting beyond a remarkable picture of six keys from a tomb at may doom but from this alone we are justified in believing that already in the early dynasties this r2 had come near to perfection in the Middle Kingdom we find distemper painting of a delightful decorative effect in the tombs of hominid and kinome hotep at Beni Hasan and such excellent examples of the art as the gazelles and the peasants and the cat watching the fray here again the artist is caught the main point that his creations must move and live under the Empire the tombs become a riot of painting the Egyptian artists have now developed every color in the rainbow and was anxious to display his skill on the walls and ceilings of homes temples palaces and graves he tried to portray refreshingly the life of the Sonny fields birds in flight through the air fishes swimming in the sea beasts of the jungle in their native haunts floors were painted to look like transparent pools and ceilings sought to rival the jewelry of the sky around these pictures were borders of geometric or floral design ranging from acquired simplicity to the most fascinating complexity the dancing girl so full of originality and Esprit the bird hunt in a boat the slim naked beauty and ochre mingling with other musicians in the tomb of knocked at Thebes these are stray samples of the painted population of the graves here as in the bar reliefs the line is good and the composition for the participants in an action whom we should portray as intermingled are represented separately in succession superposition is again preferred to perspective the stiff formalism and conventions of Egyptian sculpture are the order of the day and do not reveal that enlivening humor and realism which distinguished the later statuary but through these pictures runs a freshness of conception a flow of line and execution a fidelity to the life and movement of natural things and the joyous exuberance of color and ornament which make them a delight to the eye and the spirit with all its shortcomings Egyptian painting would never be surpassed by any oriental civilization until the middle dynasties of China the minor arts were the major art of Egypt the same skill and energy that had built Carnac and the pyramids and had crowded the temples with a populace of stone devoted itself also to the internal beautification of the home the adornment of the body and the development of all the graces of life weavers made rugs tapestries and cushions rich in color and incredibly fine in texture the designs which they create and passed down into Syria and are used there to this day the relics of Tutankhamun's tomb have revealed the astonishing luxury of Egyptian furniture the exquisite finish of every decent part chairs covered gordly with silver and gold beds of sumptuous workmanship and design jewel boxes and perfume baskets of minut artistry and baz is that only china would excel tables for costly vessels of silver gold and bronze crystal goblets and sparkling bowls of diorite so finely ground that the light shone through their stone walls the alabaster vessels of Tutankhamun and the perfect Lotus cups and drinking bowls unearthed amid the ruins of Amenhotep the Third's villa at Thebes indicate to what a high level the ceramic art was raised finally the jewellers of the Middle Kingdom and the Empire brought forth a profusion of freshest ornaments seldom surpassed in design and workmanship necklaces crowns rings bracelets mirrors pectorals chains medallions gold and silver carnelian and felspar lapis lazuli and amethyst everything is here the rich Egyptian took the same pleasure as the Japanese and the beauty of the little things that surrounded them every square of ivory on their jewel boxes had to be carved in relief and refined in precise detail they dressed simply but they lived completely and when their day's work was done they refreshed themselves with music softly played on lutes harps sistrums flutes and Liars the lute was made by stretching a few strings along a narrow sounding board the system was a group of small disks shaken on wires temples and palaces had orchestras and choirs and on the Pharaohs staff was a superintendent of singing who organized players and musicians for the entertainment of the king there is no trace of a musical notation in Egypt but this may be merely a lacuna in the remains sniff renault fur and ray marie Fatah were the Caruso's and duress keys of their day and across the centuries we hear their boasts that they fulfill every wish of the King by their beautiful singing it is exceptional that their names survive for in most cases the artists whose labors preserve the features or memory of princes priests and kings had no means of transmitting their own names to posterity we hear of Imhotep the almost mythical architect of Joseph's reign of enemy who designed great buildings like Deir el-bahri for toughness the first of wimmer II and Capuchin M and Senmut who carried on the architectural enterprises of queen hatshepsut of the artists tutmes in whose studio so many masterpieces have been found and of beck the proud sculptor who tells us in Gautier strain that he has saved Ignat on from oblivion Amenhotep the third had as his chief architect another Amenhotep son of Hoffa the Pharaoh placed almost limitless wealth at the disposal of his talents and this favored artists became so famous that later Egypt worshipped him as a God for the most part however the artist worked in obscurity and poverty and was ranked no higher than other artisans or handicraftsmen by the priests and potentates who engaged him Egyptian religion cooperated with Egyptian wealth to inspire and foster art and cooperated with Egypt's loss of Empire and affluence to ruin it religion offered motives ideas and the inspiration but it imposed conventions and restraints which bound art so completely to the church that when sincere religion died among the artists the arts that had lived on it died to this is the tragedy of almost every civilization that its soul is in its faith and seldom survives philosophy 10 philosophy the instructions of pata hotep the admonitions of you where the dialog of a misanthrope the Egyptian Ecclesiastes historians of philosophy have been want to begin their story with the Greeks the Hindus who believe that they invented philosophy and the Chinese who believe that they perfected it smile at our provincial ISM it may be that we are all mistaken for among the most ancient fragments left to us by the Egyptians our writings that belong however loosely and done technically under the rubric of moral philosophy the wisdom of the Egyptians was a proverb with the Greeks who felt themselves children beside this ancient race the oldest work of philosophy known to us is the instructions of pita hotep which apparently goes back to 2880 BC 2300 years before Confucius Socrates and Buddha but aho temp was governor of Memphis and prime minister to the king under the 5th dynasty retiring from office he decided to leave to his son a manual of everlasting wisdom it was transcribed as an antique classic by some scholars prior to the 18th dynasty the Vizier begins oh prince my lord the end of life is at hand old age descendeth upon me feebleness cometh and childishness is renewed he that is old lieth down in misery every day the eyes are small the ears are deaf energy is diminished the heart hath no rest command thy servant therefore to make over my princely authority to my son let me speak unto him the words of them that hearkened to the counsel of the men of old time those that once heard the gods I pray thee let this thing be done his gracious Majesty grants the permission advising him however to discourse without causing weariness advise not yet superfluous for philosophers whereupon ptah-hotep instructs his son be not proud because thou art learned but discourse with the ignorant man is with the sage for no limit can be set to skill neither is there any craftsman that possesses full advantages fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave maidens among the pebbles live therefore in the house of kind Lina sand men shall come and give gifts of themselves beware of making enmity by thy words overstep not the truth neither repeat that which any man be he Prince or peasant saith in opening the heart it is abhorrent to the soul if thou wouldst be a wise man beget a son for the pleasing of the God if he make straight his course after thine example if the arranged thine affairs in due order do all unto him that is good if he be heedless and trespass thy rules of conduct and is violent if every speech that cometh from his mouth is a vile word then be foul him that his talk may be fitting precious to a man is the virtue of his son and good character is a thing remembered wheresoever thou goest beware of consorting with women if thou wouldst be wise provide for thine house and love thy wife that is in 9 arms silence is more profitable to thee than abundance of speech consider how thou mayst be opposed by an expert that speaketh in counsel it is a foolish thing to speak on every kind of work if thou be powerful make thyself to be honored for knowledge and for gentleness beware of interruption and of answering words with heat put it from the control thyself and patta hotep concludes with her a she and pride nor shall any word that hath he have been set down cease out of this land forever but shall be made a pattern whereby princes shall speak well my words shall instruct a man how he shall speak yeh he shall become as one skilful in obeying excellent in speaking good fortune shall befall him he shall be gracious until the end of his life he shall be contented always this note of good cheer does not persist in egyptian thought age comes upon it quickly and sours it another sage it beware bemoans the disorder violence famine and decay that attended the passing of the old Kingdom he tells of skeptics who would make offerings if they knew where the God is he comments upon increasing suicide and adds like another Schopenhauer would that there might be an end of men that there might be no conception no birth if the land would but cease from noise and strife be no more it is clear that it where was tired and old in the end he dreams of a philosopher king who will redeem men from chaos and injustice he brings cooling to the flame of the social conflagration it is said he is the shepherd of all men there is no evil in his heart when his herds are few he passes the day to gather them together their hearts being fevered would that he had discerned their character in the first generation then would he have smitten evil he would have stretched forth his arm against it he would have smitten the seed thereof and their inheritance where is he today Duthie sleep perchance behold his might is not seen this already is the voice of the prophets the lines are cast into strophic form like the prophetic writings of the Jews and breasted properly acclaims these admonitions as the earliest emergence of a social idealism which among the Hebrews we call messianism another scroll from the Middle Kingdom denounces the corruption of the age in words that almost every generation hears to whom do I speak today brothers our evil friends of today are not of love to whom do I speak today hearts or thievish every man seizes his neighbor's goods to whom do I speak today the gentle man perishes the bold-faced goes everywhere to whom do I speak today when a man should arouse wrath by his evil conduct he stirs all men to mirth although his iniquity is wicked and then this Egyptian Swinburne pours out a lovely eulogy of death death is before me today like the recovery of a sick man like going forth into a garden after sickness death is before me today like the odour of myrrh like sitting under the sail on a windy day death is before me today like the odor of lotus flowers like sitting on the shore of drunkenness death is before me today like the course of a freshened like the return of a man from the war galley to his house death is before me today as a man longs to see his home when he had spent years of captivity saddest of all is a poem engraved upon a slab now in the Leiden Museum dating back to 2200 BC carpe diem it sings snatched the day I have heard the words of M hotep and hard to deaf words greatly celebrated as their utterances behold the places there of their walls are dismantled their places are no more as if they had never been done cometh from thence that he may tell us how they fare that he may content our hearts until we to depart to the place whither they have gone encouraged thy heart to forget it may make it pleasant for thee to follow thy desire while thou live east but murder upon thy head and garments upon the affine linen imbued with marvellous luxuries the genuine things of the Gods increase yet more thy delights and let not thy heart languish follow thy desire and thy good fashion thy affairs on earth after the mandates of thine own heart till that day of lamentation come to thee when the silent hearted Dead hears not their lamentation nor he that is in the tomb attends the morning celebrate the glad day be not weary therein lo no man taketh his Goods with him yeh none returneth again that is gone liver this pessimism and skepticism were the result it may be of the broken spirit of a nation humiliated and subjected by the Hyksos invaders they bear the same relation to Egypt that stoicism and Epicureanism bear to a defeated and enslaved Greece in part such literature represents one of those interludes like our own moral interregnum in which thought has for a time overcome belief and men no longer know how or why they should live such periods do not endure hope soon wins the victory over thought the intellect is put down to its customary menial place and religion is born again giving two men the imaginative stimulus apparently indispensable to life and work we need not suppose that such poems express the views of any large number of Egyptians behind and around the small but vital minority that pondered the of life and death in secular and naturalistic terms were millions of simple men and women who remained faithful to the gods and never doubted that right would triumph that every earthly pain and grief would be atoned for bountifully in a haven of happiness and peace 11 religion sky gods the Sun God plant God's animal God's sex God's human God's Osiris Isis and Horus minor deities the priests immortality the Book of the Dead the negative confession magic corruption for beneath and above everything in Egypt was religion we find it there in every stage and form from totemism to theology we see its influence in literature in government in art in everything except morality and it is not only varied it is tropically abundant only in Rome and India shall refine so plentiful a pantheon we cannot understand the Egyptian or man until we study his God's in the beginning said the Egyptian was the sky and to the end this and denial remained his chief divinities all these marvelous heavenly bodies were not mere bodies they were the external forms of mighty spirits gods whose wills not always concordant ordained their complex and buried movements the sky itself was a vault across whose vastness a great cow stood who was the goddess Hathor the earth lay beneath her feet and her belly was clad in the beauty of ten thousand stars or for the gods and myths differed from Nome to Nome the sky was the god cebu lying tenderly upon the earth which was the goddess knew it from their gigantic copulation all things had been born constellations and stars might be gods for example sajo and sucked it Oh Ryan and Sirius were tremendous deities shahu eight gods three times a day regularly occasionally some such monster ate the moon but only for a moment soon the prayers of men and the anger of the other gods forced the greedy Sal to vomit it up again in this manner the Egyptian populace explained in the of the moon the moon was a god perhaps the oldest of all that were worshiped in Egypt but in the official theology the greatest of the gods was the Sun sometimes it was worshipped as the supreme deity Roth or Rey the bright father who fertilized mother earth with rays of penetrating heat and light sometimes it was a divine calf born in you at every dawn sailing the sky slowly in a celestial boat and descending into the West at evening like an old man tottering to his grave or the Sun was the god Horus taking the graceful form of a falcon flying majestically across the heavens day after day as if in supervision of his realm and becoming one of the recurrent symbols of Egyptian religion and royalty always raah or the Sun was the Creator at his first rising seeing the earth desert and bear he had flooded it with his energizing rays and all living things vegetable animal and human had sprung pell-mell from his eyes and been scattered over the world the earliest men and women being direct children of raaah had been perfect and happy by degrees their descendants had taken to evil ways and had forfeited this perfection and happiness whereupon rod is satisfied with his creatures had destroyed a large part of the human race learn and Egyptians questioned this popular belief and asserted on the contrary like certain Sumerian scholars that the first men had been like brutes without articulate speech or any of the arts of life all in all it was an intelligent mythology expressing piously man's gratitude to earth and sun so exuberant was this piety that the Egyptians worshiped not merely the source but almost every form of life many plants were sacred to them the palm tree that shaded them amid the desert the spring that gave them drink in the Oasis the grove where they could meet and rest the Sycamore flourishing miraculously in the sand these were with excellent reason holy things and to the end of his civilization the simple Egyptian brought them offerings of cucumbers grapes and figs even the lowly vegetable found its devotees and ten amused himself by showing how the onion and so displeased both way had been a divinity on the banks of the Nile more popular were the animal gods they were so numerous that they filled the Egyptian pantheon like a chattering menagerie in one gnome or another in one period or another Egyptians worshipped the bull the crocodile the hawk the cow the goose the goat the RAM the cat the dog the chicken the swallow the jackal the serpent and allowed some of these creatures to roam in the temples with the same freedom that is accorded to the sacred cow in India today when the gods became human they still retained animal doubles and cymbals Ammon was represented as a goose or a ram raw as a grasshopper or a bull Osiris as a bull or a ram Sebek as a crocodile Horus as a hawk or falcon Hathor as a cow and Thoth the god of wisdom as a baboon sometimes women were offered to certain of these animals as sexual mates the bull in particular as the incarnation of Osiris received this honor and at Mendis says Plutarch the most beautiful women were offered in coitus to the divine goat from beginning to end this totemism remained as an essential and native element in Egyptian religion human gods came to Egypt much later and probably as gifts from Western Asia the goat and the bull were especially sacred to the Egyptians as representing sexual creative power they were not merely symbols of Osiris but incarnations of him orphan Osiris was depicted with large and prominent organs as a mark of his supreme power and models of him in this form or with a triple phallus were born in religious processions by the Egyptians on certain occasions the women carried such phallic images and operated them mechanically with strings signs of sex worship appear not only in the many cases in which figures are depicted on temple reliefs with erect organs but in the frequent appearance in Egyptian symbolism of the crooks ansata a cross with a handle as a sign of sexual union and vigorous life at last the gods became human or rather men became gods like the deities of Greece the personal gods of Egypt were merely superior men and women made in heroic mold but composed a bone and muscle flesh and blood they hungered and ate stood and drank loved and mated hated and killed grew old and died there was a cyrus for example god of the beneficent Nile whose death and resurrection were celebrated yearly as symbolizing the fall and rise of the river and perhaps the decay and growth of the soil every Egyptian of the later dynasties could tell the story of how set or sit the wicked god of desiccation who shriveled up harvests with his burning breath was angered at Osiris the Nile for extending with his overflow the fertility of the earth slew him and reigned in dry Majesty over Osiris's Kingdom that is the river once failed to rise until Horus brave son of Isis overcame set and banished him we're after Osiris brought back to life by the warmth of Isis's love ruled benevolently over Egypt suppressed cannibalism established civilization and then ascended to heaven to reign there endlessly as a god it was a profound myth for history like oriental religion is dualistic a record of the conflict between creation and destruction fertility and desiccation rejuvenation and exhaustion good and evil life and death profound - was the myth of Isis the Great Mother she was not only the loyal sister and wife of Osiris in a sense she was greater than he for like woman in general she had conquered death through love nor was she merely the black soil of the Delta fertilized by the touch of Osiris Nile and making all Egypt rich with her fecundity she was above all the symbol of that mysterious creative power which had produced the earth and every living thing and of that maternal tenderness whereby at whatever cost to the mother the young new life is nurtured to maturity she represented in Egypt as Kali Ishtar and Sybil II represented in Asia Demeter in Greece and Ceres in Rome the original priority and independence of the female principal in creation and the inheritance and the originated leadership of woman in tilling the earth for it was Isis said the myth who had discovered wheat and barley growing wild in Egypt and had revealed them to Osiris man the Egyptians worshipped her with special fondness and and raised up jeweled images to her as the mother of God her tonsured priests praised her in sonorous Matins and Vespers and in midwinter of each year coincident with the annual rebirth of the Sun towards the end of our December the temples of her divine child Horus god of the Sun showed her in holy effigy in a stable the babe that she had miraculously conceived these poetic philosophic legends and symbols profoundly affected Christian ritual and theology early Christians sometimes worshipped before the statues of Isis suckling the infant Horus seeing in them another form of the ancient and noble myth by which woman that is the female principle creating all things becomes at last the mother of God these rah or as he was called in the South Ammon Osiris Isis and Horus were the greater gods of Egypt in later days rah Ammon and another God Fatah were combined as three embodiments or aspects of one supreme and triune deity there were countless lesser divinities Anubis the jackal Tefnut Nephthys cat Newt but we must not make these pages of Museum of dead gods even Pharaoh was a god always the son of Amon raah ruling not merely by divine right but by divine birth as a deity transiently tolerating the earth as his home on his head was the Falken symbol of Horus and totem of the tribe from his forehead Rose the yuria sore serpent symbol of wisdom and life and communicating magic virtues to the crown the king was chief priests of the faith and led the great processions and ceremonies that celebrated the festivals of the gods it was through this assumption of divine lineage and powers that he was able to rule so long with so little force hence the priests of Egypt with the necessary props of the throne and the secret police of the social order given a faith of such complexity a class had to arise adept in magic and ritual whose skill would make it indispensable in approaching the gods in effect though not in law the office of priest passed down from father to son and the class grew up which through the piety of the people and the politic generosity of the Kings became in time richer and stronger than the feudal aristocracy or the royal family itself the sacrifice is offered to the gods supplied the priests with food and drink the temple buildings gave them spacious homes the revenues of temple lands and services furnished them with ample incomes and their exemption from forced labor military service and ordinary taxation left them in an envy of prestige and power they deserved not a little of this power for they accumulated and preserved the learning of Egypt educated the youth and disciplined themselves with rigour and zeal Herodotus describes them almost with all they are of all men the most excessively attentive to the worship of the gods and observed the following ceremonies they wear linen garments constantly fresh washed they are circumcised for the sake of cleanliness thinking it better to be clean than handsome they shaved their whole body every third day that neither license or any other impurity may be found upon them they wash themselves in cold water twice every day and twice every night what distinguished this religion above everything else was its emphasis on immortality if Osiris the Nile and all vegetation might rise again so might man the amazing preservation of the dead body in the dry soil of Egypt lent some encouragement to this belief which was to dominate Egyptian faith for thousands of years and to pass from it by its own resurrection into Christianity the body Egypt believed was inhabited by a small replica of itself called the car and also by a soul that dwelt in the body like a bird flitting among trees all of these body car and soul survived the appearance of death they could escape mortality for a time in proportion as the flesh was preserved from decay but if they came to Osiris clean of all sin they would be permitted to live forever in the happy field of food those heavenly Gardens where there would always be abundance and security judged the harassed penury that spoke in this consoling dream these Elysian Fields however could be reached only through the services of a ferryman an Egyptian prototype of Charon and this old gentleman would receive into his boat only such men and women as had done no evil in their lives or Osiris would question the dead weighing each candidates heart in the scale against a feather to test his truthfulness though who failed in this final examination would be condemned to lie forever in their tombs Hungary and thirsting fed upon by hideous crocodiles and never coming forth to see the Sun according to the priests there were clever ways of passing these tests and they offered to reveal these ways for a consideration one was to fit up the tomb with food drink and servants to nourish and help the dead another was to fill the tomb with talismans pleasing to the gods fish vultures snakes above all the Scarab a beetle which because it reproduced itself apparently with fertilization to provide the resurrected soul if these were properly blessed by a priest they would frighten away every assailant and annihilate every evil a still better way was to buy the Book of the Dead scrolls for which the priests had written prayers formulas and charms calculated to appease even to deceive Osiris when after a hundred vicissitudes and perils the dead soul at last reached Osiris it was to address the great judge in some such manner as this o thou who speed esteems advancing winged thou dweller in all mysteries of life thou guardian of every word I speak behold thou art ashamed of me thy son thy heart is full of sorrow and of shame for that my sins were Grievous in the world and proud my wickedness and my transgression o be at peace with me o be at peace and break the barriers that loom between us let all my sins be washed away and fall forgotten to the right and left of thee yeh do away with all my wickedness and put away the shame that fills thy heart that thou and I henceforth may be at peace or the soul was to declare its innocence of all major sins in a negative confession that represents for us one of the earliest and noblest expressions of the moral sense in man hail to the Great God Lord of truth and justice I have come before thee my master I have been brought to see thy beauties I bring unto you truth I have not committed iniquity against men I have not oppressed the poor I have not laid labor upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself I have not defaulted I have not committed that which is an abomination to the gods I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his Master I've not starved any man I have not made any to weep I have not assassinated any man I have not committed treason against any I have not in aught diminished the supplies of the temple I have not spoiled the showbread of the gods I have done no carnal act within the sacred enclosure of the temple I have not blaspheme I have not falsified the balance I have not taken away milk from the mouths of sucklings I have not taken with Nets the birds of the gods I am pure I am pure I am pure for the most part however Egyptian religion had little to say about morality the priests were busier selling charms mumbling incantations and performing magic rights than inculcating ethical precepts even The Book of the Dead teaches the faithful the charms blessed by the clergy will overcome all the obstacles that the deceased soul may encounter on its way to salvation and the emphasis is rather unresting the good life says one role if this can be known by the deceased he shall come forth by day that is rise to eternal life amulets and incantations were designed and sold to cover a multitude of sins and secure the entrance of the devil himself into paradise at every step the pious Egyptian had to mutter strange formulas to avert evil and attract the good here for example an anxious mother trying to drive out demons from her child run out Val Luke immersed in darkness who interest in stealth comest out who kissed this child I will not let thee kiss him come a spell to take him away I will not let me take him away from me I have made his protection against the out of effort herb which makes pain out of onions which harm thee out of honey which is sweet to the living and bitter to the dead out of the evil parts of the Abdo fish out of the backbone of the perch the gods themselves used magic and charms against one another the literature of Egypt is full of magicians of wizards who dry up lakes with the word or cause severed limbs to jump back into place or raise the dead the King had magicians to help or guide him and he himself was believed to have a magical power to make the rain fall or the river rise life was full of talismans spells divinations every door had to have a God to frighten away evil spirits or fortuitous strokes of bad luck children born on the 23rd of the month of Thoth would surely die soon those born on the 20th of Troy Hawk would go blind each day and month says Herodotus is assigned to some particular God and according to the day on which each person is born they determine what will befall him how he will die and what kind of person he will be in the end the connection between morality and religion tended to be forgotten the road to eternal bliss led not through a good life but through magic ritual and generosity to the priests let a great Egyptologist express the matter the dangers of the hereafter were now greatly multiplied and for every critical situation the priest was able to furnish the dead with an effective charm which would infallibly cure him besides many charms which enabled the dead to reach the world of the hereafter there were those which prevented him from losing his mouth his head his heart others which enabled him to remember his name to breathe eat drink avoid eating his own foul honest to prevent his drinking water from turning into flame to turn darkness into light to ward off all serpents and other hostile monsters and many others thus the earliest moral development which we can trace in the ancient East was suddenly arrested or at least checked by the detestable devices of a corrupt priesthood eager for gain such was the state of religion in Egypt when if not on poet and heretic came to the throne and inaugurated the religious revolution that destroyed the Empire of Egypt for the heretic King the character of Ignat on the new religion him to the son monotheism the new Dogma the Nuart reaction nefra Teti breakup of the empire death of Ignat on in the year 13 80 BC Amenhotep the third who had succeeded Tut most the third died after a life of worldly luxury and display and was followed by his son Amnon hotep the fourth destined to be known as Ignat on a profoundly revealing portrait bust of him discovered at tell el-amarna shows a profile of incredible delicacy a face feminine in softness and poetic in its sensitivity large eyelids like a dreamers a long misshapen skull a frame slender and weak here was a shelley called to be a king he had hardly come to power when he began to revolt against the religion of Ammon and the practices of Hammonds priests in the great temple at Karnak there was now a large harem supposedly the concubines of Ammon but in reality serving to amuse the clergy the young Emperor whose private life was a model of fidelity did not approve of this sacred harlotry the blood of the RAM slaughtered in sacrifice to Ammon stank in his nostrils and the traffic of the priests in magic and charms and their use of the Oracle of Ammon to support religious obscurantism and political corruption disgusted him to the point of violent protests more evil are the words of the priests he said than those which I heard until the year 4 of his reign more evil are they than those which King Amenhotep the third heard his youthful spirit rebelled against the sordidness into which the religion of his people had fallen he abominated the indecent wealth and lavish ritual of the temples and the growing hold of a mercenary hierarchy on the nation's life with the poet's audacity he through compromise to the winds and announced bravely that all these gods and ceremonies were a vulgar idolatry that there was but one God Aten like Akbar in India 30 centuries later it gnihton saw divinity above all in the Sun in the source of all earthly life and light we cannot tell whether he had adopted his theory from Syria and whether at dawn was merely a form of Adonis of whatever origin the new God filled the Kings soul with delight he changed his own name from Amenhotep which contained the name of Ammon to ignite on meaning Aten is satisfied and helping himself with old hymns and certainly monotheistic poems published in the preceding reign he composed passionate songs to a tongue of which this the longest and the best is the fairest surviving remnant of Egyptian literature by dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky Oh living at on beginning of life when thou risest in the eastern horizon Alf illest every lamp with our beauty thou art beautiful great glittering high above every land the raise they encompassed the land even all that thou has made thou art ray and thou carries them all away captive thou bind this them by thy love though thou art far away thy razor upon earth though thou art on high thy footprints are the day when thou settest in the western horizon of the sky the earth is in darkness like the dead they sleep in their chambers their heads are wrapped up their nostrils are stopped and none see if the other all their things are stolen which are under their heads and they know it not every lion cometh forth from his den all serpents they sting the world is in silence he that made them rested in his horizon fright as the earth will now rise as din the horizon well now shyness as a town by day thou drive us away the darkness when thou sendest forth I raise the two lands are in daily festivity awake and standing upon their feet when now has to raise them up their limbs bathed they take their clothing their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning in all the world they do their work all cattle rest upon their pasture äj-- the trees and the plants flourish the birds flutter in their marshes their wings uplifted in adoration to thee all the sheep dance upon their feet all wing and things fly they live when now has shone upon them the barks sail upstream and downstream every highway is open because they honest the fish in the river leap up before thee thy Ray's are in the midst of the great green sea creator of the German woman maker of seed in man giving life to the Sun in the body of his mother soothing him that he may not weep nurse even in the womb giver of breath to animate everyone that he maketh when he cometh forth from the body on the day of his birth thou o penis to his mouth in speech thou supplies his necessities when the fledgling and the egg chirps in the egg thou give us him breath therein to preserve him alive when thou hast brought him together to the point of bursting the egg he cometh forth from the egg to chirp with all his might he goeth about upon his two feet when he hath come forth therefrom how many fold are thy works they are hidden from before us so so God whose powers no other possesses thou didst create the earth according to thy heart while thou wast alone men all cattle large and small all that are upon the earth that go about upon their feet all that are on high that fly with their wings the foreign countries Syria and cush the land of Egypt thou settest every man into his place thou supplies their necessities thou makest the Nile in the nether world thou bringest as thou desirous to preserve alive the people how excellent are thy designs our Lord of eternity there is a Nile in the sky for the strangers and for the cattle of every country that go upon their feet thy rays nourish every garden when thou risest they live they grow by thee thou make us the seasons in order to create all thy work winter to bring them coolness and heat that they may taste thee thou didst make the distant sky to rise therein in order to behold all that thou has made thou a lone shining in the form as living at on dawning glittering going afar and returning thou makest millions of forms through thyself alone cities towns and tribes highways and rivers all eyes see thee before them for thou art a town of the day over the earth thou art in my heart there is no other that knoweth thee say thy son Ignat on thou has made him wise in my designs and in thy might the world is in thy hand even as thou has made them when thou hast risen they live when thou settest they die for thou art length of life of thyself men lived through thee while their eyes are upon thy beauty until thou settest all labourers put away when thou settest in the West thou didst establish the world and raised them up for thy son if not on whose life is long and for the chief royal wife his beloved mistress of the two lands Nefer and nephew art on nefra teddy living and flourishing for ever and ever this is not only one of the great poems of history it is the first outstanding expression of monotheism 700 years before Isaiah perhaps says breasted suggests this conception of one soul God was a reflex of the unification of the Mediterranean world under Egypt by Thomas the third dick Newton conceives his God is belonging to all nations equally and even names other countries before his own as in Athens care this was an astounding advance upon the old tribal deities note the vitalistic conception Atanas to be found not in battles and victories but in flowers and trees in all forms of life and growth Atanas the joy that causes the young sheep to dance upon their legs and the birds to flutter in their marshes nor is the God a person limited to human form the real divinity is the creative and nourishing heat of the Sun the flaming glory of the rising or setting orb is but an emblem of that ultimate power nevertheless because of its omnipresent fertilizing beneficence the Sun becomes to ignite on also the Lord of love the tender nurse that creates the manchild and woman and fills the two lands of Egypt with love so at last a town grows by symbolism into a solicitous father compassionate and tender not like Yahweh a Lord of Hosts but the god of gentleness and peace it is one of the tragedies of history that it not on having achieved his elevating vision of universal unity was not satisfied to let the noble quality of his new religion slowly win the hearts of men he was unable to think of his truth in relative terms the thought came to him that other forms of belief and worship were indecent and intolerable suddenly he gave orders that the names of all gods but Adan should be erased and chiseled from every public inscription in Egypt he mutilated his father's name from a hundred monuments to cut from at the word Amman he declared all Creed's but his own illegal and commanded that all the old temples should be closed he abandoned Thebes is unclean and built for himself a beautiful new capital at akkad atong city of the horizon of a tongue rapidly Thebes decayed as the offices and the monuments of government were taken from it and Akhenaten became a rich metropolis busy with fresh building and the Renaissance of Arts liberated from the priestly bondage of tradition the joyous spirit expressed in the new religion passed over into its art at tell el-amarna a modern village on the side of Akhenaten Sir William Flinders Petrie unearthed the beautiful pavement adorned with birds fishes and other animals painted with the most delicate grace Ignat on forbad the artists to make images of down on the lofty ground that the true God has no form for the rest he left art free merely asking his favorite artists back Utah and nut Mo's to describe things as they saw them and to forget the conventions of the priests they took him at his word and represented him as a youth of gentle almost timid face and strangely de la cosa phallic head taking their lead from his vitalistic conception of deity they painted every form of plant and animal life with loving detail and with a perfection hardly surpassed in any other place or time for a while art which in every generation knows the pangs of hunger and obscurity flourished in abundance and happiness had it not on been a mature mind he would have realized that the change which he had proposed from a superstitious polytheism deeply rooted in the needs and habits of the people to a naturalistic monotheism that subjected imagination to intelligence was too profound to be affected in a little time he would have made haste slowly and softened the transition with intermediate steps but he was a poet rather than a philosopher like Shelley announcing the demise of yaver to the bishops of Oxford he grasped for the absolute and brought the whole structure of Egypt down upon his head at one blow he had dispossessed and alienated a wealthy and powerful priesthood and had forbidden the worship of deities made dear by long tradition and belief when he had a Manhattan is father's name had seemed to his people a blasphemous impiety nothing could be more vital to them than the honouring of the ancestral dead he had underestimated the strength and pertinacity of the priests and he had exaggerated the capacity of the people to understand a natural religion behind the scenes the priests plotted and prepared and in the seclusion of their homes the populace continued to worship their ancient and innumerable gods a hundred crafts that had depended upon the temples muttered in secret against the heretic even in his palace his ministers and Generals hated him and prayed for his death for was he not allowing the Empire to fall to pieces in his hands meanwhile the young poet lived in simplicity and Trust he had seven daughters but no son and though by law he might have sought an heir by his secondary wives he would not but preferred to remain faithful to no Fratelli a little ornament has come down to us that shows him embracing the Queen he allowed artists to depict him riding in a chariot through the streets engaged in pleasantries with his wife and children on ceremonial occasions the Queen sat beside him and held his hand while their daughters frolicked at the foot of the throne he spoke of his wife as mistress of his happiness and hearing whose voice the king rejoices and for an oath he used the phrase as my heart is happy in the Queen and her children it was a tender interlude in Egypt's epic of power into this simple happiness came alarming messages from Syria the dependencies of Egypt in the near East were being invaded by Hittites and other neighbouring tribes the governor's appointed by Egypt pleaded for immediate reinforcements it Knapton hesitated he was not quite sure that the right of conquest warranted him in keeping these states in subjection to Egypt and he was loathe to send Egyptians to die on distant fields for so uncertain a cause when the dependencies saw that they were dealing with the saint they deposed their Egyptian governors quietly stopped all payment of tribute and became to all effects free almost in a moment Egypt ceased to be a vast empire and shrank back into a little state soon the Egyptian treasury which had for a century dependent upon foreign tribute as its mainstay was empty domestic taxation had fallen to a minimum and the working of the gold mines had stopped internal administration was in chaos Ignat on found himself penniless and friendless in a world that had seemed all his own every colony was in revolt and every power in Egypt was arrayed against him waiting for his fall he was hardly 30 when in 1362 BC he died broken with the realization of his failure as a ruler and the unworthiness of his race 5 decline and fall Tutankhamun the labors of ramses ii the wealth of the clergy the poverty of the people the conquest of egypt summary of egyptian contributions to civilization 2 years after his death his son-in-law to Dan Kammen a favorite of the priests ascended the throne he changed the name of to tank Aten which his father-in-law had given him returned the capital to Thebes made his peace with the powers of the Church and announced to a rejoicing people the restoration of the ancient gods the words Aten and ignite on were effaced from all the monuments the priests forbad the name of the heretic King to pass any man's lips and the people referred to him as the great criminal the names that Ignat on had removed for recarved upon the monuments and the feast days that he had abolished were renewed everything was as before for the rest Tutankhamun reigned without distinction the world would hardly have heard of him had not unprecedented treasures been found in his grave after him a Doughty general ham hob marched his armies up and down the coast restoring Egypt's external power and internal peace setting the first wisely reap the fruits of renewed order and wealth built the hypostyle Hall at Karnak began to cut a mighty temple into the cliffs at Abu Simbel commemorated his grandeur and magnificent reliefs and had the pleasure of lying for thousands of years and one of the most ornate of Egypt's tombs at this point the romantic Rama seized the second last of the great Pharaoh's mounted the throne seldom is history known so picturesque a monarch handsome and brave he added to his charms by his boyish consciousness of them and his exploits in war which he never tired of recording were equaled only by his achievements in love after brushing aside a brother who had inopportune rights to the throne he sent an expedition to Nubia to tap the gold mines there and replenish the treasury of Egypt and with the resultant funds he undertook the reconquest of the Asiatic provinces which had again rebelled three years he gave to recovering Palestine then he pushed on met a great army of the Asiatic Allies at Kadesh 1288 BC and turned to defeat into victory by his courage and leadership it may have been as a result of these campaigns that a considerable number of Jews were brought into Egypt as slaves or as immigrants and Rama seized the second is believed to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus he had his victories commemorated without undue impartiality on half a hundred walls commissioned a poet to celebrate him in epic verse and rewarded himself with several hundred wives when he died he left one hundred sons and fifty daughters to testify to his quality by their number and their proportion he married several of his daughters so that they too might have splendid children his offspring were so numerous that they constituted for 400 years a special class in Egypt from which for over a century her rulers were chosen he deserved these consolations for he seems to have ruled Egypt well he built so lavishly that half the surviving edifices of Egypt are ascribed to his reign he completed the main hall at Karnak added to the temple of Luxor raised his own vast shrine the Ramesseum west of the river finished the Great Mountain sanctuary at Abu Simbel and scattered colossi of himself throughout the land commerce flourished under him both across the Isthmus of Suez and on the Mediterranean he built another canal from the Nile to the Red Sea but the shifting sands filled it up soon after his death he yielded up his life in 1225 BC aged 90 after one of the most remarkable rains of history only one human power in Egypt had excelled his and that was the clergy here as everywhere in history ran the endless struggle between church and state throughout his reign and those of his immediate successors the spoils of every war and the lion's share of taxes from the conquered provinces went in the temples and the priests these reached the zenith of their wealth under Rama seized the third they possessed at that time one hundred seven thousand slaves one thirtieth of the population of Egypt they held 750,000 acres one seventh of all the arable land they owned five hundred thousand head of cattle they received the revenues from 169 towns in Egypt and Syria and all this property was exempt from taxation the generous or timorous Rama seized the third showered unparalleled gifts upon the priests of Amman including thirty-two thousand kilograms of gold and a million kilograms of silver every year he gave them one hundred eighty-five thousand sacks of corn when the time came to pay the workmen employed by the state he found his Treasury empty more and more the people starved in order that the gods might eat under such a policy it was only a matter of time before the Kings would become the servants of the priests in the reign of the last Rama seed King the high priest of Amman usurped the throne and ruled as openly supreme the Empire became a stagnant theocracy in which architecture and superstition flourished and every other element in the national life decayed omens were manipulated to divine sanction to every decision of the clergy the most vital forces of Egypt were sucked dry by the thirst of the gods at the very time when foreign invaders were preparing to sweep down upon all this concentrated wealth for meanwhile on every frontier trouble brewed the prosperity of the country had come in part from its strategic place on the main line of Mediterranean trade its metals and wealth had given it mastery over Libya on the west and over Phoenicia Syria and Palestine on the north and east but now at the other end of this trade route in Assyria Babylon and Persia new nations were growing to maturity and power were strengthening themselves with invention and enterprise and were daring to compete in commerce and industry with the self-satisfied in pious Egyptians the Phoenicians were perfecting the trireme galley and with it were gradually resting from Egypt the control of the sea the Dorian's and Achaeans had conquered Crete and the Aegean circa 1400 BC and were establishing a commercial empire of their own trade moved less and less in slow caravans over the difficult and robber infested mountains and deserts of the Near East it moved more and more at less expense and with less laws in ships that passed through the Black Sea and the Aegean to Troy Crete and Greece at last to Carthage Italy and Spain the nations along the northern shores of the Mediterranean ripened and blossomed the nations on the southern shores faded and rotted away Egypt lost her trade her gold her power her art at last even her pride one by one her rivals crept down upon her soil harassed and conquered her and laid her waste in 954 BC the Libyans came in from the western hills and laid about them with fury in 722 the Ethiopians entered from the south and avenged their ancient slavery in 674 the Assyrians swept down from the north and subjected priests ridden Egypt a tribute for a time Bassam tich Prince of Cius repelled the invaders and brought Egypt together again under his leadership during his long reign and those of his successors came the say it-- revival of egyptian art the architects and sculptors poets and scientists of egypt gathered up the technical and aesthetic traditions of their schools and prepared to lay them at the feet of the greeks but in 525 BC the Persians under Kampai sees crossed sewers and again put an end to egyptian independence in 332 BC Alexander sallied out of Asia and made Egypt a province of Macedon in 48 BC Caesar arrived to capture Egypt's new capital Alexandria and to give to Cleopatra the son and heir whom they vainly hoped to crown as the unifying monarch of the greatest empires of antiquity in 30 BC Egypt became a province of Rome and disappeared from history for a time it flourished again when saints peopled the desert and Cyril dragged a patient to her death in the streets 415 ad and again when the Muslims conquered it circa 8650 built Cairo with the ruins of Memphis and filled it with bright domed mosques and Citadel's but these were alien cultures not really Egypt's own and they too passed away today there is a place called Egypt but the Egyptian people are not masters there long since they have been broken by conquest and merged in language and marriage with their Arab conquerors their cities know only the authority of Muslims and Englishmen and the feet of weary pilgrims who travel thousands of miles to find that the pyramids are merely heaps of stones perhaps greatness could grow there again if Asia should once more become rich and make Egypt a halfway house of the planets trade but of the morrow as Lorenzo sang there is no certainty today the only certainty is decay on all sides gigantic ruins monuments and tombs memorials of a savage and titanic energy on all sides poverty and desolation and the exhaustion of an ancient blood and on all sides the hostile engulfing sands blown about forever by hot winds and grimly resolved to cover everything in the end nevertheless the sands have destroyed only the body of ancient Egypt it's spirit survives in the lore and memory of our race the improvement of agriculture metallurgy industry and engineering the apparent invention of glass and linen of paper and ink of the calendar and the clock of geometry and the alphabet the refinement of dress and ornament of furniture and dwellings of society and life the remarkable development of orderly and peaceful government of census and post of primary and secondary education even of technical training for office and administration the advancement of right in literature of science and medicine the first clear formulation known to us of individual and public conscience the first cry for social justice the first widespread monogamy the first monotheism the first essays in moral philosophy the elevation of architecture sculpture and the minor arts to a degree of excellence and power never so far as we know reached before and seldom equaled since these contributions were not lost even when their finest exemplars were buried under the desert or overthrown by some convulsion of the globe through the Phoenicians the Syrians and the Jews through the Cretans the Greeks and the Romans the civilization of Egypt passed down to become part of the cultural heritage of mankind the effect or remembrance of what Egypt accomplished at the very dawn of history has influenced in every nation and every age it is even possible as for has said that Egypt through the Solidarity the unity and the disciplined variety of its artistic products through the enormous duration and the sustained power of its effort offers the spectacle of the greatest civilization that has yet appeared on the earth we shall do well to equal it

Channel: Durant and Friends

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Keywords: Will Durant, Egypt, Ancient Egypt, History

Id: mxgqMp-__Xs

Length: 188min 15sec (11295 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 09 2018