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Title: Egypt of the pharaohs and of the Khedivé
Author: F. Barham Zincke
Release date: October 30, 2023 [eBook #71987]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1873
Credits: Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND OF THE KHEDIVÉ ***
[Illustration]
THE EXPLANATION OF THE COVER-PLATE.
I have been given to understand that the cover-plate of this volume needs
some explanation: if so, it can now only be inserted on an additional
fly-leaf.
At the top is the familiar, winged, serpent-supported globe of the old
Egyptians. This, as every body knows, is generally found over the main
entrances of the temples, and on the heads of mummy cases. In speaking
on such subjects we must not press words too far. But I believe it may
be taken for what we may almost call a pantheistic emblem, compounded
of symbols of three of the attributes of Deity, as then imagined. The
central globe, the sun, represents the source of light and warmth, and,
therefore, of life. The serpents represent maternity. The wings, beneath
which the hen gathers her chickens, represent protection. This is one
interpretation.
There might have been, and doubtless were, contained in the emblem other
ideas, irrecoverable now by the aid of the ideas that exist in our
minds. At all events, theological emblems, like theological terms, must
vary in their import from time to time, in accordance with the varying
knowledge of those who use them: for they can be read only by the light
of what is in the mind of the reader. This emblem, therefore, may not
always have stood to the minds of the old Egyptians for precisely the
same conceptions. The above interpretation, however, probably contained
for them, for some millenniums, its main and most obvious suggestions;
suggestions which were for those early days a profound, though easily
read, exposition of the relations of nature to man, and which are very
far from being devoid of, at all events, historical interest to the
modern traveller in Egypt.
For the lower division of the plate, the author of the volume is
responsible. It is meant to illustrate the statement on page 15, that
the agricultural wealth of Egypt that is to say its history, results in
a great measure from the fact of its having a winter as well as a summer
harvest. The sun is represented on the right, at its winter altitude,
maturing the wheat crop, which stands for the varied produce of the
temperate zone; on the left, at its summer altitude, maturing the cotton
crop, which stands for the varied produce of the tropical, or almost
tropical, zone. Both have been grown beneath the same Palm tree, which
symbolizes the region itself. The unusually erect Palm tree in the plate,
was cut from a photographic portrait of one which we may trust is still
yielding fruit, and casting on the rock-strewn ground the shade of its
lofty tuft of wavy leaves, in the Wady Feiran, to the north-east of
Mount Sinai. The black diagonal line gives the equator of the sky at the
latitude of Cairo, which is taken, for the purposes of the illustration,
as the mean latitude of Egypt. This is also indicated by the Pyramid.
The pathway of the sun is given as it is represented on one of the
finest and most precious monuments of old Egypt in its proudest days—the
wonderfully instructive monolithic alabaster sarcophagus of the great
Sethos, Joseph’s Pharaoh, at all events the grandfather of the Pharaoh
of the Exodus. It is now in Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields (page 138). This firmamental road way of the great luminary (the
contemporary explanation of the “firmament,” in our English version, of
the first chapter of the Pentateuch, the “stereõma” of the Septuagint)
is so sculptured on the sarcophagus, originally it was also so coloured,
as to indicate granite. The granite—this I regret—cannot be brought out
distinctly on the plate.
The beneficent action of the mysterious river, which made, and maintains
Egypt, is suggested by the three wavy lines, the old hieroglyphic for
water.
The star-sown azure, which suggests the supernal expanse, the most
glorious, and the most instructive scene the eye and the mind of man are
permitted to contemplate, is taken from the vaulted ceiling of the temple
of Sethos and Rameses at primæval This (page 100).
How deep is the interest with which these facts and thoughts affect the
mind!
EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND OF THE KHEDIVÉ
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_The Duty and Discipline of Extemporary Preaching._
Second Edition.
C. SCRIBNER & CO., New York.
_A Winter in the United States_:
Being Table-talk collected during a Tour through the late Southern
Confederation, the Far West, the Rocky Mountains, &c.
JOHN MURRAY, London.
_A Month in Switzerland._
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., London.
EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS
AND OF
THE KHEDIVÉ
BY
F. BARHAM ZINCKE
VICAR OF WHERSTEAD AND CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN
HUMANI NIHIL ALIENUM
_SECOND EDITION, MUCH ENLARGED,
WITH A MAP_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1873
_All rights reserved_
_DEDICATION_
TO MY STEPSON, FRANCIS SEYMOUR STEVENSON
I Dedicate this Book
IN THE HOPE THAT ITS PERUSAL MAY SOME DAY CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS DISPOSING
HIM TO THE STUDY OF NATURE AND OF MAN SINGLY FOR TRUTH’S SAKE
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The best return in my power for the favourable reception the reading
public, and many writers in the periodical press, have accorded to this
book, is to take care that the Edition I am now about to issue shall be
as little unworthy as I can make it of the continuance of their favour;
though, indeed, this, which they have a right to expect, is no more than
I ought to be glad to do for my own sake.
I have, therefore, carefully revised the whole volume. In this revision I
have, without omitting, or modifying, a single statement of fact, or of
opinion, introduced as much new matter as nearly equals in bulk a fourth
of the old. These additions include a few reminiscences of my Egyptian
tour, which had not recurred to me while engaged on the original work;
but, in the main, they consist of fuller developments of some of its more
important investigations and views.
As I find that several copies of the first edition were taken off in the
autumn, and early winter, by persons who were about to proceed to Egypt,
I have, for the convenience of any, who, for the future, may be disposed
to use the work as a travelling companion in the land of the Pharaohs and
of the Khedivé, added a map of the country and an index: the former, I
trust, will be found a good example of the accuracy of Messrs. Johnston’s
cartography.
WHERSTEAD VICARAGE: _January 16, 1873_.
INTRODUCTION
Those particulars of the History of Egypt, and of its present condition,
in which it differs from other countries, are factors of the idea this
famous name stands for, which must be brought prominently into view in
any honest and useful construction of the idea. Something of this kind is
what the author of the following work has been desirous of attempting,
and so was unable, as he was also unwilling, to pass by any point, or
question, which fell within the requirements of his design. His aim,
throughout, has been to aid those who have not studied the subject much,
or perhaps at all, in understanding what it is in the past, and in the
present, that gives to Egypt a claim on their attention. The pictures of
things, and the thoughts about them, which he offers to his readers, are
the materials with which the idea of Egypt has been built up in his own
mind: they will judge how far with, or without, reason.
The work had its origin in a tour the author made through the country in
the early months of this year. It consists, indeed, of the thoughts that
actually occurred to him at the time, and while the objects that called
them forth were still before him; with, of course, some pruning, and,
here and there, some expansion or addition. They are presented to the
reader with somewhat more of methodical arrangement than would have been
possible had the hap-hazard sequence, in which the objects and places
that suggested them were visited, been adhered to.
As he started for Egypt at a few hours’ notice, it did not occur to
him to take any books with him. This temporary absence of the means of
reference, and verification, will, in some measure, account for the
disposition manifested throughout to follow up the trains of thought
Egyptian objects quicken in the beholder’s mind. These _excursus_,
however, as they will appear to those who take little interest in the
internal, and ask only for the external, incidents of travel, have been
retained, not merely because they were necessary for what came to be the
design of the work, but also because, had they been excluded, the work
would have ceased to be something real; for then it would not have been
what it professes to be, that is, a transcript of the thoughts which the
sights of Egypt actually gave rise to in the authors mind.
WHERSTEAD VICARAGE: _May 13, 1871_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EGYPT AND THE NILE 1
II. HOW IN EGYPT NATURE AFFECTED MAN 12
III. WHO WERE THE EGYPTIANS? 25
IV. EGYPT THE JAPAN OF THE OLD WORLD 42
V. BACKSHEESH.—THE GIRL OF BETHANY 45
VI. ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTER OF THE PYRAMID CIVILIZATION 52
VII. LABOUR WAS SQUANDERED ON THE PYRAMIDS BECAUSE IT COULD
NOT BE BOTTLED UP 57
VIII. THE GREAT PYRAMID LOOKS DOWN ON THE CATARACT OF PHILÆ 70
IX. THE WOODEN STATUE IN THE BOULAK MUSEUM 72
X. DATE OF BUILDING WITH STONE 75
XI. GOING TO THE TOP OF THE GREAT PYRAMID 85
XII. LUNCHEON AT THE PYRAMIDS. KÊF 92
XIII. ABYDOS 97
XIV. THE FAIOUM 105
XV. HELIOPOLIS 117
XVI. THEBES—LUXOR AND KARNAK 124
XVII. THEBES—THE NECROPOLIS 133
XVIII. THEBES—THE TEMPLE-PALACES 144
XIX. RAMESES THE GREAT GOES FORTH FROM EGYPT 154
XX. GERMANICUS AT THEBES 164
XXI. MOSES’S WIFE 168
XXII. EGYPTIAN DONKEY-BOYS 170
XXIII. SCARABS 177
XXIV. EGYPTIAN BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE 182
XXV. WHY THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES IGNORE THE FUTURE LIFE 193
XXVI. THE EFFECT OF EASTERN TRAVEL ON BELIEF 244
XXVII. THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF INTERPRETATION 257
XXVIII. THE DELTA—DISAPPEARANCE OF ITS MONUMENTS 266
XXIX. POST-PHARAOHNIC TEMPLES IN UPPER EGYPT 285
XXX. THE RATIONALE OF THE MONUMENTS 290
XXXI. THE WISDOM OF EGYPT, AND ITS FALL 299
XXXII. EGYPTIAN LANDLORDISM 328
XXXIII. CASTE 332
XXXIV. PERSISTENCY OF CUSTOM IN THE EAST 337
XXXV. ARE ALL ORIENTALS MAD? 341
XXXVI. THE KORAN 345
XXXVII. ORIENTAL PRAYER 349
XXXVIII. PILGRIMAGE 355
XXXIX. ARAB SUPERSTITIONS.—THE EVIL EYE 359
XL. ORIENTAL CLEANLINESS 365
XLI. WHY ORIENTALS ARE NOT REPUBLICANS 370
XLII. POLYGAMY—ITS CAUSE 374
XLIII. HOURIISM 381
XLIV. CAN ANYTHING BE DONE FOR THE EAST? 389
XLV. ACHMED TRIED IN THE BALANCE WITH HODGE 396
XLVI. WATER-JARS AND WATER-CARRIERS 402
XLVII. WANT OF WOOD IN EGYPT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 405
XLVIII. TREES IN EGYPT 410
XLIX. GARDENING IN EGYPT 414
L. ANIMAL LIFE IN EGYPT.—THE CAMEL 417
LI. THE ASS.—THE HORSE 424
LII. THE DOG.—THE UNCLEAN ANIMAL.—THE BUFFALO.—THE OX.—THE
GOAT AND THE SHEEP.—FERÆ NATURÆ 428
LIII. BIRDS IN EGYPT 436
LIV. THE EGYPTIAN TURTLE 441
LV. INSECT PLAGUES 443
LVI. THE SHADOOF 445
LVII. ALEXANDRIA 448
LVIII. CAIRO 458
LIX. THE CANALIZATION OF THE ISTHMUS 472
LX. CONCLUSION 494
[Illustration: EGYPT]
EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS, AND OF THE KHEDIVÉ.
CHAPTER I.
EGYPT AND THE NILE.
Quodque fuit campus, vallem decursus aquarum
Fecit.—OVID.
The history of the land of Egypt takes precedence, at all events
chronologically, of that of its people.
The Nile, unlike any other river on our globe, for more than the last
thousand miles of its course, the whole of which is through sandy
wastes—the valley of Egypt being, in fact, only the river channel—is
not joined by a single affluent. Nor, in this long reach through the
desert, does it receive any considerable accessions from storm-water.
From the beginning of its history—that is to say, for more than five
thousand years, for so far back extend the contemporary records of its
monuments—Egypt has been wondering, and, from the dawn of intelligent
inquiry in Europe, all who heard of Egypt and of the Nile have been
desiring to know what, and where, were the hidden sources of the strange
and mighty river, which alone had made Egypt a country, and rendered it
habitable.
Nowhere, in modern times, has so much interest been felt about this
earliest, and latest, problem of physical geography as in England; and no
people have contributed so much to its solution as Englishmen. At this
moment the whole of the civilised world is concerned at the uncertainty
which involves the fate of one of our countrymen, the greatest on the
long roll of our African explorers, who has, now for some years, been
lost to sight in the perplexing interior of this fantastic continent,
while engaged in the investigation of its great and well-kept secret; but
who, we are all hoping, may soon be restored to us, bringing with him, as
the fruit of his long and difficult enterprise, its final and complete
solution.[1] Thoughts of this kind do not stand only at the threshold of
a tour in Egypt, as it were, inviting one to undertake it, but accompany
one throughout it, deepening the varied interest there is so much
everywhere in Egyptian objects to awaken.
* * * * *
One of the first questions to force itself on the attention of the
traveller in Egypt is—How was the valley he is passing through formed?
This is a question that cannot be avoided. It was put to Herodotus,
more than two thousand years ago, by the peculiarities of the scene. He
answered it after his fashion, which was that of his time. It was, he
said, originally an arm of the sea, corresponding to the Arabian Gulf,
the Red Sea; and had been filled up with the mud of the Nile. Those
were days when, as was done for many a day afterwards, the answers to
physical questions were sought in metaphysical ideas. The one to which
the simple-minded, incomparable, old Chronicler had recourse on this
occasion was that of a supposed symmetrical fitness in nature. There is
the Red Sea, a long narrow gulf, a very marked figure in the geography of
the world, trending in from the south, on the east side of the Arabian
Hills. There ought therefore to be on the west side of this range a
corresponding gulf trending in from the north: otherwise the Arabian Gulf
would be unbalanced. That compensatory gulf had been where Egypt now is.
The demonstration was complete. Egypt must have been an arm of the sea,
which had been gradually expelled by the deposit from the river. This
argument, however, is not unassailable, even from the fitness-of-things
point of view. Had the fitness-of-things been in this matter, and in
this fashion, a real agent in nature, it should have made the valley of
Egypt somewhat more like the Red Sea in width; and it should also have
interdicted its being filled up with mud. It should have had the same
reasons and power for maintaining it, which it had originally for making
it. In this way, however, did men when they first began to look upon the
marvels of Nature with inquiring interest, suppose that metaphysical
conceptions, creatures of the brain, were entities in Nature, and would
supply the keys that were to unlock her secrets.
‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile.’ But I believe that it is the gift of
the Nile in a much larger sense than Herodotus had in his mind when he
wrote these words. It is the gift of the Nile in a double sense. The Nile
both cut out the valley, and also filled it up with alluvium. The valley
filled with alluvium is Egypt. The excavation of the valley was the
greater part of the work. That it was formed in this way was suggested
to me by its resemblance to the valley of the Platte above Julesburg,
as it may be seen even from a car of the Pacific Railway. You there
have a wide valley, like Egypt, perfectly flat, bounded on either side
by limestone bluffs, sometimes inclined at so precipitous an angle that
nothing can grow upon them, excepting, here and there, a conifer or two;
and sometimes at so obtuse an angle that the slopes are covered with
grass. These varying inclinations reproduce themselves in the bounding
ranges of the valley of Egypt. The Platte writhes, like a snake, from
side to side of its flat valley, cutting away in one place the alluvium,
all of which it had itself deposited, and transporting it to another. It
is continually silting up its channel, first in one place, and then in
another, with bars and banks, which oblige the stream to find itself a
new channel to the right or left. The bluffs, though now generally at a
considerable distance from the river, must have been formed by it, when
it was working sometimes against one, and sometimes against the other
side of the valley; and sometimes also for long periods leaving both, and
running in a midway channel. Why should not the Nile have done the same?
This supposition is supported by the fact that when you have a soft
cretaceous limestone, and rocks that may be easily worn away, the valley
of Egypt is wide. When, as you ascend the stream, you pass at Silsiléh
into the region of compact siliceous sandstone, the valley immediately
narrows. And when you enter the granite region at Assouan, there ceases
to be any valley at all. The river has not been able, in all the ages
of its existence, to do more than cut itself an insufficient channel
in this intractable rock. All this is just what you would expect on the
supposition that it was the river that had cut out the valley.
We are sure, at all events, of one step in this process. For there is
incontrovertible evidence that, in the historical period, the river
flowed at a level twenty-seven feet higher than it does at present, as
far down as Silsiléh. In several places, down to that point, may be found
the Nile alluvium, deposited on the contiguous high ground at that height
above the highest level the river now reaches in its annual inundations.
There is, besides, the old deserted channel from a little below Philæ
to Assouan, into which the river cannot now rise. Here, then, is the
evidence of Nature.
We have also the testimony of man to the same fact, contemporary
testimony inscribed on the granite. Herodotus tells us, that from the
time of Mœris, the Egyptians had preserved an uninterrupted register of
the annual risings of the Nile. This Mœris of the Greeks was Amenemha
III., one of the last kings of the primæval monarchy, before the invasion
of the Hyksos. This register was preserved both in a written record, in
which the height of the inundation was given in figures for each year,
(this is what Herodotus mentions,) and also in engraved markings on
suitable river-side rocks. Of these markings, we, fortunately, have a
series at Semnéh, in Nubia. Sesortesen II., the father of Amenemha III.,
had conquered Nubia. This event took place between two and three thousand
years before our era. To secure his conquest, he built at Semnéh a strong
castle on one of the perpendicular granite cliffs, between which the Nile
had cut its channel. His son, not content with instituting the written
register Herodotus mentions, ordered that the height of the inundation
should, each year, be inscribed on the granite cliffs of Semnéh, which
had been fortified by his father, and where an Egyptian garrison was
kept. This castle, little injured by time, is still standing. Here was
the most appropriate place for such a register. It was the actual bank of
the river; it was perpendicular; it was indestructible; it measured all
the water that came into Egypt. Amenemha must have been familiar with the
place, for it was the custom of the princes to accompany the king in war.
Now, there are thirteen of Amenemha’s inscriptions at this day on this
cliff. Each gives a deeply-incised line for the height of the rising,
and under it is an hieroglyphic inscription, informing us that that line
indicates the height to which the river rose in such and such a year of
Amenemha’s reign. In every instance the date is given. In the reign of
Amenemha’s successor, the invasion of the Hyksos took place, terminated
the old monarchy, and for four hundred years threw everything into
confusion. But, what we are concerned with, is the fact that in the reign
of this king and his successor, the Nile rose, on an average, twenty-four
feet above the level to which it rises now.
Here, then, are two witnesses, Nature and Man. The coincidence of
their testimony is as clear and complete as it is undesigned. It may,
therefore, be accepted as an undoubted fact, that the Nile is now flowing
from Semnéh to Silsiléh at a level lower by at least twenty-four feet
than it did at the date of the inscriptions. Nature says there was a
time when it rose at least twenty-seven feet higher than at present, for
at that height it deposited alluvium. There is no discrepancy in these
three additional feet, though there would have been something like a
discrepancy had Nature indicated three feet less than the markings.
The only question for us to consider is, how this was brought about. It
could have been brought about only in one way, and that was by the river
deepening its channel. As far down as Silsiléh it had been flowing at a
higher level. Here there must have been a cataract, or an actual cascade.
Whatever the form of the obstruction, the stream carried it away. And
so, again and again, working backwards, it ate out for itself a deeper
channel all the way up to Semnéh. This is just how the Niagara river is
dealing with its channel. It has undertaken the big job of deepening it,
from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, down to the level of Ontario. The stone
it has to work in is very hard and compact. It has now done about half
the work, and every one sees that it will eventually complete it. All
that is required is time. The River Colorado, we are told, runs for six
hundred miles of its course in a canon, a mile in perpendicular depth,
all cut through rock, and some of it granitic.
This is what the Nile did in the historic period for at least two hundred
miles of its course. It planed down this part of its channel to a lower
level, to what may be called the level of Egypt. Why should it not have
done precisely the same work in the prehistoric period for, in round
numbers, the four hundred miles from Silsiléh to Cairo, that is to say,
for the whole valley of Egypt? That is just what I believe it did. Of
course, there were aboriginal facilities which decided it upon taking
that course. There may also have been greater depressions in some places
than in others. There was harder work here, and lighter work there. The
planing was carried on rapidly in one district, and slowly in another.
But I believe that, after making whatever deductions may be thought
proper for aboriginal depressions, it is safe to conclude that the valley
of Egypt was, in the main, cut out by the Nile. It did not begin to
obtain its abrading power after the reign of Amenemha III.
There may have been a cataract once at Cairo. When this was carried away,
another must have been developed somewhere above its site, and so on
backwards all the way to Silsiléh, where we are sure that there was once
something of the kind. In a still remoter past the river may not have
come as far north as Cairo, but may have passed through the Faioum, or
by the Natron Lakes, into the desert. This is a question which, to some
degree, admits of investigation.
The river would not always be bearing on the same side of the valley. A
little change in any part of the channel, and which might result from
any one of a variety of causes, would deflect its course. It is so
with all rivers. These causes are always everywhere at work. The river
would thus be always shifting from one side of the valley to the other;
and, impinging in turn on the opposite bounding hills, would always be
widening the valley.
The number of side canals, especially the Bahr Jusuf, which, throughout
almost the whole length of the valley, is a second Nile, running parallel
to the original river, must, during the historical period, by lessening
the volume of water in the main channel, have very much lessened its
power of shifting its course. But every one who voyages on the Nile will
become aware that this power is still very great. He will often hear, and
see, large portions of the incoherent bank falling into the water. In
many places he will observe the fresh face of recent landslips. On the
summit of these slips he will occasionally have presented to him interior
sections of some of the houses of a village which is being carried away
by the stream.
On the fresh faces of recent slips I often observed that the
stratification was unconformable, and irregular. This indicated that the
sand and mud out of which the alluvium had been formed, had not been
deposited at the bottom of a quiet lake-like inundation, but must have
been formed at the bottom of a running stream, precisely in the same way
as the sand-banks and mud-banks of the existing channel are always at the
present time being formed. This irregular stratification is just what we
might expect to find in the alluvium of a valley through which runs a
mighty river, always restlessly shifting its channel to the right, or to
the left.
To experts in geology there will be but little, or nothing, new in the
above given account of the process, by which the Nile formed Egypt. All
river valleys have been formed, more or less, by the action of running
water. It is, however, interesting both to those who are familiar, and
to those who are not, with such investigations, to trace out the steps
of the process, in such a manner as to be able to construct a connected
view of as many of its details as can be recovered. In any case this
would be interesting; but here it has an exceptional, and quite peculiar,
interest, for it enables us to picture to the mind’s eye how the whole
of the most historical country in the world was formed by the most
historical river in the world—a physical operation, on which much that
man has achieved, and, indeed, on which what man is himself at this day,
very largely depended. Pictures of this kind are only one among the many
helpful contributions, which science can now make to history.
I was not in Egypt during the time of the inundation; I can, therefore,
only repeat on the authority of others, that for the first few days it
has a green tint. This is supposed to be caused by the first rush of the
descending torrents sweeping off a great deal of stagnant water from the
distant interior of Darfour. This green Nile is held to be unwholesome,
and the natives prepare themselves for it by storing up, in anticipation,
what water they will require for these few days. The green is succeeded
by a red tint. This is caused by the surface washing of districts where
the soil is red. The red water, though heavily charged with soil, is not
unwholesome. With respect to the amount of red in the colour of the water
of the inundation, I found it stated in a work which is sometimes quoted
as an authority on Egyptian subjects, that it is so great that the water
might be mistaken for blood. This I do not understand, as the soil this
water leaves behind has in its colour no trace of red. By the time the
water of the inundation reaches the Delta, it has got rid of the greater
part of its impurities. This causes the rise of the land in the Delta
to be far slower than in Upper Egypt. In winter, when the inundation
has completely subsided, the water, though still charged with mud, in
which, however, there is no trace of red, is pleasant to drink, and quite
innocuous. The old Egyptians represented in their wall-paintings these
three conditions of the river by green, red, and blue water.
For myriads of years this mighty river has been bringing down from the
highlands of Abyssinia and Central Africa its freight of fertile soil,
the sole means of life, and of all that embellished life, to those who
invented letters, and built Karnak. It is still as bountiful as ever it
was of old to the people who now dwell upon its banks; but to what poor
account do they turn its bounty! How great is the contrast between the
wretchedness this bounty now maintains, and the splendour, the wealth,
the arts, the intellectual and moral life it maintained four and five
thousand years ago!
The Egyptians have a saying, with which, I think, most of those who have
travelled in Egypt will agree, that he who has once drunk the water of
the Nile will wish to drink it again.
CHAPTER II.
HOW IN EGYPT NATURE AFFECTED MAN.
Continuo has leges, æternaque fœdera certis
Imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum
Deucalion vacuum lapides jactavit in orbem.—VIRGIL.
The physical features, and peculiarities of a country are one of the
starting-points in the history of its people. If we do not provide
ourselves with a knowledge of these matters before we commence our
investigation of what the people were, and did, the character of the
people, and of the events is sure very soon to make us feel the want of
it. It is so in a higher degree with the history of the Egyptians, than
with that of any other people. They were, emphatically, a people that
stood alone; and the peculiarities of the people were the direct result
of the peculiarities of the country.
Its environment by the desert gave it that security, which alone in
early days could have enabled nascent civilization to germinate and
grow. It possessed also a soil and climate which allowed its inhabitants
to devote themselves to some variety of employments and pursuits, and
so prevented their being all tied down to the single task of producing
food. The absence of these two great natural advantages elsewhere placed
insurmountable difficulties in the way of advancement in other parts
of the world, so long as the arts by which man battles with nature were
few, and feeble; and the organization of society in consequence only
rudimentary. So was it, for instance, in Europe, at the time when Egypt
was at the zenith of its greatness; where, too, for long centuries
afterwards, nothing could have been done without the aid of slavery,
which alone made mental culture possible for the few at the cost of the
degradation and misery of the many. Egypt was differently circumstanced.
There one man might produce food sufficient for many. The rest,
therefore, could devote themselves to other employments, which might
tend, in different ways, to relieve man’s estate, and embellish life.
In this matter the river and the climate were their helpers. The river
manured with an annual warp, irrigated, cleaned, and softened the land;
and the climate, working harmoniously with the river, made the operations
of agriculture easy, speedy, certain, and very productive. What in other
countries, and in later times, the slow advances in arts, and knowledge,
and in social organization, as the successive steps became possible,
brought about for their respective inhabitants, Nature did, in a great
measure at once, and from the first, for the Egyptians.
Another of the early hindrances to advancement arose out of the
difficulties of communication, which prevented either a military force
from maintaining itself away from home, or a single governing mind from
acting at a distance. Of course in matters of this kind the effects of
the want of sufficient means of communication are greatly aggravated by
the want of foresight, and the distrust men have in each other, which
belong to such times and circumstances. Nothing but the organization
of tribes and cities can be accomplished then. Egypt, however, had
advantages in the great and varied gifts of nature to which our
attention is now directed, which enabled her, in some remote prehistoric
period, to emerge from this politically embryonic condition, and to form
a well-ordered and homogeneous state, embracing a population of several
millions, who were in possession of many of the elements of wealth and
power, and had attained to a condition that would suggest, and encourage
culture. Of these advantages, that which came next in order to the soil
and climate, was that its good fortune had conferred upon it a ready-made
means of communication, absolutely complete and perfect; no part of the
country, either in the valley of Egypt, or in the Delta, being more than
a few miles distant from one of the most easily navigable rivers in the
world.
And that nothing might be wanting, this advantage was equalised to all
by a provision of nature that, at a certain season of the year, the
descending current of the river should, for the purposes of navigation,
be overbalanced by a long prevalence of northerly winds; thus giving
every facility, by self-acting agencies, to both the up and the down
traffic.
I may also observe that the river ran precisely in that direction in
which it could serve most effectually as a bond of union, by serving most
largely as a channel of commerce. If its course had been along the same
parallel of latitude, that is, from East to West, or reversely, then
throughout its whole length the productions of its banks would have been
the same. It would, therefore, have been of little use as a means of
commercial interchange. Where there was no variety of productions there
would have been no commodities to exchange. But as its course was in
the direction of a parallel of longitude, its stream offered a highway
for the exchange of the varying products of the different degrees of
latitude it passed through. This difference in the direction of their
courses already constitutes a vast difference in the comparative utility
of the streams of the Amazon and of the Mississippi; and must ensure to
them very dissimilar futures.
Another of the provisions that had been made for the early progress of
the country was something quite unique: there was not by nature, and
there could not be constructed by man, a single strong place in the whole
of Egypt, such as would enable powerful and ambitious individuals, or
malcontent factions of the people, to maintain themselves in independence
of the rest of the community, or to defy the government. Nature had
supplied no such places, and the conditions of the country were such that
they could not be formed. This is a point which involves so much that I
will return to it presently.
It ought not to be unnoticed here, for it is one of the important
peculiarities of the country, that Egypt yields both a winter and a
summer harvest. The overflow of the river, and the warmth of the winter
sun suffice for the former, which consists of the produce of temperate
regions; and artificial irrigation for the latter, which consists of the
produce of the tropics. This gives it the advantage of the climates of
two zones; the one temperate and the other tropical; for, though it lies
to the north of the tropic, its winter, by reason of its environment by
the heat-accumulating desert, resembles our summer, and its summer, for
the same reason, that of the tropics. Egypt is thus enabled to exceed
all other countries in the variety of its produce. Both its wheat and
its cotton are grown beneath its palms. This variety of produce ought
to contribute largely to the wealth, and well-being of a country; and
it was, we know, a very considerable ingredient in the greatness of the
Egypt of the Pharaohs.
The characteristics of surrounding nature had corresponding effects on
the ideas, too, and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians. We may, for
instance, be absolutely certain that had they lived in an Alpine country,
although they might have had the power of commanding the requisite
materials on easier terms, they never would have built the Pyramids, for
then an Egyptian Pyramid would have been but a pigmy monument by the
side of nature’s Pyramids. But as these structures stood in Egypt, when
seen from the neighbourhood of Memphis and Heliopolis, and throughout
that level district of country, they went beyond nature. There they were
veritable mountains; and that is what the word means. There were no other
such mountains to be seen. In that was their motive. Man had entered into
rivalry with nature, and had outdone nature.
So was it with one instance. And so was it on the whole, generally. The
guise in which nature presented herself to the eye of the Egyptian was
grand and simple. Nature to him meant the broad beneficent river; the
green plain; the naked bounding ridge on the right hand, and on the
left; upon, and beyond these the lifeless, colourless desert; above, the
azure depth traversed by the unveiled sun by day, and illumined with
the gleaming host of heaven by night. Here were just five grand natural
objects, and there were no more. We rehabilitating to our mind’s eye
the scene, must add a sixth, the orderly, busy, thronging community
itself. But to them these five objects were all nature. No dark forests
of ancient oak, and pine; no jutting headlands; no island-sown seas; no
hills watered from above, nor springs running among the hills; no cattle
upon a thousand hills; no shady valleys; no smoking mountains. Just five
grand objects; everywhere just the same, and nothing else. Their thoughts
and sentiments could only have been a reflection of nature (their mind
as a glass reflected nature), and of the instincts which the form of
society nature had imposed upon them gave rise to. And their acts could
only have been the embodiment of their thoughts and sentiments, which
must needs have been in harmony with surrounding nature. And hence the
character of the people, which was grand and simple; but withal sensibly
hard, somewhat rigid and formal, without much tenderness, and with little
geniality; solid, grave, and serious.
Under such circumstances the individual was nothing. There could be no
Homeric Chieftains; no Tribunes of the people; no eccentricities of
genius. The community was an organism, of which every member had his
special functions and purpose; a well-ordered machine which did much
work, and did it smoothly.
This complete organization of society—it was what the gifts and
arrangements of nature had enabled them to attain to—had brought them
face to face with the ideas of law and justice. But under their form of
society—and it has not been different under other forms the world has
since seen—it was understood that some laws, which were necessary, were
not good, and that justice did not rule absolutely. We see—it shows
itself in all that they did—that their minds were too thorough, and
logical, to rest satisfied under these contradictions; they therefore
worked out for themselves to its legitimate, and complete development the
old Aryan thought of a life beyond this present existence: this was that
western world of theirs, in which no law would be bad, and in which there
would be no miscarriage of justice. And thus it came to be that their
doctrine of a future life was the apotheosis of their social ideas of
law, and justice, and right.
And nature encouraged them in this belief. Every day they saw the sun
expire in the western boundary of the solid world; and the next morning
rise again to life. They saw also the mighty river always moving on to
annihilation in the great sea, just as the sun sank every evening into
the desert: but still it was not annihilated. Its being was lost, and
was recovered, at every moment. It was ever dying, but equally it was
ever living. These two great phenomena of nature (through our increased
knowledge they teach other lessons now) aided the idea which the working
of society was making distinct in their apprehension, and confirmed them
in the belief of their own immortality. With the Egyptian also death
would not be the end: the renewal he beheld in the sun, and in the river,
would not fail himself.
The complete organization of the whole population had been rendered
possible by the peculiar advantages of the country. The enterprising
among the Pharaohs availing themselves of this complete organization, and
of these peculiar advantages, were thereby enabled to command the whole
resources of Egypt, and to wield the whole community at their will, as if
it had been but one man.
I reserved for separate and fuller consideration the point that nature
had nowhere provided Egypt with a single spot where the ambitious,
the discontented, or the oppressed could maintain themselves; or to
which, we may add, they could even secede. In this respect also, Egypt
is quite unique. The configuration of the country, combined with the
absence of rain, brought about this peculiarity. The valley of Egypt,
speaking roundly, is five hundred miles long, and five miles wide, with
a broad navigable river flowing through the midst of it. The Government
will always be in possession of the river. It follows then that before
the disaffected can be drawn together in formidable numbers at any
rendezvous—for the distances they would have to traverse would not admit
of this—the Government will be able to send troops by the river in
sufficient force to disperse them; or, at all events, to prevent their
receiving reinforcements.
A second reason is, that these handfuls of isolated insurgents must
always remain within reach of the Government troops sent against them.
They would not be able to withdraw themselves from the flat, open banks
of the river; for there is nowhere vantage ground they could occupy,
except in the desert; and there in twenty-four hours, that is before they
could be starved, they would by thirst be reduced to submission. For,
from the absence of rain, there are no springs on the high ground; and
from the same cause the nitre accumulates in the soil to such a degree,
as to render the well-water brackish, and unfit for drinking.
A third reason is the dependence of the agriculture of Egypt on
irrigation. The people, therefore, in any neighbourhood cannot intermit
their attention to their shadoofs and canals for the purpose of
insurrection, or for any other purpose whatsoever. Were they to do so
starvation would ensue. The Government also, being in possession of
the river, could at any moment stop the irrigation, by destroying the
shadoofs and canals, of a malcontent district.
Here, then, are three reasons, any one of which would, singly, be
sufficient to make the Government in Egypt omnipotent. What conceivable
chance, then, can the people have, when all the three are, at all
times, combined against them? This explains much in the past and present
history of the country. Nature had decided that in it there should be
no strongholds for petty potentates, no castles for freebooters, no
mountain fastnesses for untameable tribes, no difficult districts to
harbour insurgent bands; no possibility of getting away from the bank of
the river; no possibility of withdrawing attention, for a time, from the
most artificial of all forms of agriculture. For long ages the wandering
Arab of the desert was the only possible disturber of the peace of this
exceptional country. Nature first gave to it, in its singular endowments,
the means of union; and then eliminated those physical obstacles to its
realization which, elsewhere, for long ages proved insurmountable. The
point to be particularly noted here is, that these circumstances have
ever given to the Government for the time being every natural facility
for uniting the whole country into a single State, and ruling it
despotically.
The Delta is no exception, for the branches of the river, and the canals
by which this whole district is permeated, and the absence of defensible
positions, reduce it, in respect to the points I have been speaking of,
to the same condition as that of the long narrow valley above it.
A time may come when the moral force of public opinion will outweigh,
and overmatch these natural facilities for establishing, and working a
despotism; but there is no indication in the existing condition of the
country of such a time being at hand. And that this is the only force
that can be of any effect in such a country is demonstrated by its
history. In the remote days of its greatness there was in some sort a
substitute for it in the priestly municipal aristocracy, or oligarchy,
of each city. The priests were the governing class, and supplied the
magistracy. They were an united and powerful body. Wealth, religion,
knowledge, the habitual deference of the people, made them strong. They
thus became, to some considerable extent, a bulwark, behind which, in
each separate city, some of the rights of person and of property could
find protection from the arbitrary caprices of despotism. In this way
something that was in the mind of man was at that time counterworking the
consequences of physical arrangements: and this only is the way in which
a country so circumstanced can be helped in the future.
Nothing, however, of this kind is now at work in modern Egypt. It has,
therefore, but one ground for the hope of escaping from the despotism
which so heavily oppresses it, and that is in the chance of external
aid, which means the chance that some European power should assume the
protectorate of the country. It must, however, be a power in which public
opinion is in favour of liberty and political justice, and in which the
economical value of security for person and property is understood. The
Egyptians themselves desire such a consummation. They know how blessed
to them would be the day which should relieve them from the grinding and
senseless exactions of an oriental taskmaster, and place them under the
sway of good and equal laws. Their wish is that this beneficent protector
should be England. They almost expect that it will be. I was asked, why
do you not come and take possession of the country? In Egypt this appears
the natural conclusion of existing conditions. But a protectorate carried
out thoroughly, and unflinchingly, and entirely for Egyptian objects,
would be far better for both parties than simple English possession. If
we were to make a gain by ruling the country, we should always be tempted
to go a little further. We should find it very difficult to stop at any
particular point, or to be clean-handed at all, when everything was in
our power.
The motives for interference are strong. How saddening is it to the
traveller to see the poor good-natured Fellah, his naked limbs scorched
by the blazing sun, baling up the water from the river, during the
livelong day, for his little plot of ground; and to think that all that
will be left to him of its produce will be barely enough to keep himself,
and his little ones, in millet-bread and onions; all the rest having been
cruelly swept away to support at Cairo unused, and unuseable, palaces and
regiments, and to make a Suez Canal for the furtherance of the policy
of France, but for the naval and commercial benefit of England, and to
build sugar-factories for a trading Khedivé. Of what benefit to the
wretched cultivator are all the bounties of Egyptian nature, and all his
own heavy moil and toil? This is one of the remorseless, and purposeless
oppressions done under the sun, which it would be well that some modern
Hercules should arise in his might, and in his hatred of such heartless
and stupid injustice, to beat down, and make a full end of. An Egypt,
in which every man might reap securely the fruit of his labour, would
be a new thing in the world, and a very pleasant thing to look upon. At
present, the riches of Egypt mean wealth without measure for one man, and
poverty without measure for all the rest of the world.
The case of the poor Fellah is very hard: so also is that of his
palm-tree. It came into existence, and grew up to maturity under great
difficulties. It was hardly worth while to give it space and water, and
to fence it round in its early days; for so soon as it could bear a bunch
of fruit, it was to be taxed. Why, then, should the oppressed villager
go to the cost of rearing it? He would be only toiling for a domestic
despot, or foreign bond-holder. How many a palm-tree that might now be
helping to shade a village, and beneath which the children might be
playing, and the elders sitting, has by this hard and irrational impost,
been prevented from coming into being. And of all the gifts of nature to
Egypt, this palm-tree is one of the most characteristic, and of the most
useful: its trunk supplies the people with beams; its sap is made into
a spirit; its fruit is in some districts a most useful article of food,
and everywhere a humble luxury; baskets are made of the flag of its leaf,
and from the stem of the leaf beds, chairs, and boxes; its fibres supply
materials for ropes and cordage, nets and mats; it has, too, its history
in Egypt, for its shaft and crown, first suggested to the dwellers on the
banks of the Nile, in some remote age, the pillar and its capital. A wise
ruler, whether his wisdom was that of the head, or of the heart, would
do everything in his power to induce his people to multiply, throughout
the land, what is so highly useful, and in so many ways. But the plan
despotic wisdom adopts is to kill the bird that lays the golden egg, and
by a process which shall at the same time cause as few as possible of the
precious kind to be reared for the future.
Every traveller in the valley of the Nile, who can think and feel, finds
his pleasure, at the sight of the graceful form of this beneficent tree,
clouded by the unwelcome recollection of the barbarous and death-dealing
tax that is laid upon it.
If, when the Turkish empire falls to pieces, England should shrink from
undertaking, on her own sole responsibility, the protectorate of Egypt,
the great powers of Europe, together with the United States of America,
might, as far as Egypt is concerned, assume the lapsed suzerainty of the
Porte, and become the protectors of Egypt conjointly.
CHAPTER III.
WHO WERE THE EGYPTIANS?
Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius.
What were the origin and affinities of the ancient Egyptians? To what
race, or races, of mankind did they belong? At what time, whence, and
by what route did they enter Egypt? The answer to these questions, if
attainable, would not be barren.
We have just been looking at the physical characteristics of the country,
and noting some of the effects they must have had on the character
and history of the people. The inquiry now indicated, if carried to a
successful issue, will enable us, furthermore, to understand, to some
extent, what were the aboriginal aptitudes the people themselves brought
with them. These were the moral and intellectual elements on which the
influences of nature had to act. The result was the old Egyptian. He was
afterwards modified by events and circumstances, by increasing knowledge,
and by the laws and customs all these led to; but the two conditions we
are now speaking of were the starting-points, and which never ceased to
have much influence in making this people feel as they felt, and enabling
them to do what they did. To have acquired, therefore, some knowledge
about them will be to have got possession of some of the materials that
are indispensable for reconstructing the idea of old Egypt. We feel with
respect to these old historical peoples as we do about a machine: we are
not satisfied at being told that it has done such or such a piece of
work; we also want to know what it is within it, which enabled it to do
the work—what is its construction, and what its motive power.
Six thousand years before our own time may be taken as the starting-point
of the monumental and traditional history of the old monarchy. This
inquiry, however, will carry us back to a far more remote past.
There is but one way of treating this question: that is, to apply to it
the method we apply to any question of science—to that, for instance,
of gravitation, or to any other: precisely the same method applied in
precisely the same way. We must collect the phenomena; and the hypothesis
which explains and accounts for them all is the true one. This will act
exclusively: in establishing itself it will render all others impossible.
Other hypotheses, however, which have been, or may be, entertained must
not be passed by unnoticed, in order that it may be understood that they
do not account for the phenomena; or, to put it reversely, that the
phenomena contradict them.
When history begins to dawn, the first object the light strikes upon,
and which for a long time alone rears its form above the general gloom,
is the civilization of Egypt. It stands in isolation, like a solitary
palm by the side of a desert spring. It is also like that palm in being a
complete organism, and in producing abundance of good fruit. All around
is absolute desert, or the desert sparsely marked with the useless forms
of desert life. On inquiry we find that this thoroughly-organized
civilization, fully supplied with all the necessaries, and many of the
embellishments of life, and which is alone visible in the dawning light,
must have existed through ages long prior to the dawn. It recedes into
unfathomable depths of time far beyond the monuments and traditions.
Some salient particulars at once arrest our attention. The people, though
African by situation, do not, at first sight, strike us as possessing,
preponderantly, African affinities. If there be any, they are not so much
moral, or intellectual, as physical. They appear to be more akin to the
inhabitants of the neighbouring Arabian peninsula, from which there is a
road into Egypt. But here also the resemblances are not great: even that
of language is far from conclusive. Their complexion, too, is fairer. On
neither side is there any suspicion, or tradition of kindred. There is
even deep antipathy between the two. Their religion, again, and religion
is the _summa philosophia_—the outcome of all the knowledge, physical
and moral, of a people, is unlike that of their neighbours. The Greeks,
however, and this is worthy of remark, thought it only another form of
their own. They were laborious, skilful, and successful agriculturists;
and there was no record of a time when it had been otherwise with
them. They were great builders. They had always practised the ordinary
arts of life, spinning and weaving, metallurgy, pottery, tanning, and
carpentering. They had always had tools and music. They had a learned
and powerful priesthood. Their form of government was that of a monarchy
supported by privileged classes, or of an aristocracy headed by a king,
and resting on a broad basis of slavery, and a kind of serfdom. Their
social order was that of castes.
We cannot ascertain precisely at what point in the valley this
civilization first showed, or established itself. Of two points, however,
which are of importance, we are sure. It did not descend the Nile from
Ethiopia, and it did not ascend it from the coast of the Delta. It is
true that Memphis was the first great centre of Egyptian life of which
we have full and accurate knowledge. The founder, however, of the first
historical dynasty, and who appears to have made Memphis his capital,
came from This, or Abydos, in Upper Egypt. We may almost infer from this
that Abydos was an earlier centre of Egyptian power than Memphis.
The idea, then, of an unmixed African origin may, I think, be at once and
summarily dismissed.
Something may be alleged in support of a Semitic origin. Where, however,
we may ask, is the theory on behalf of which nothing can be alleged?
If it were so it would never have come into existence. What we have to
consider in this, as in every doubtful or disputed matter, is not what
can be said in favour of certain views, or what can be said against them,
but which way the balance inclines when the arguments on each side have
been fairly put into their respective scales.
To begin, then, with the language, which is the most obvious ground for
forming an opinion in a matter of this kind. It happens that in this case
nothing conclusive can be inferred from the language. First, because in
it no very decisive Semitic affinities have been made out; and, secondly,
because, had they been found to be much more important than some have
supposed them to be, this would not of itself prove a preponderance of
Semitic blood.
Colour is rather adverse to the Semitic theory. The Egyptian was not so
swarthy as the Arab; whereas, if he had been a Semite, he ought to have
been, at the least, as dark. In the wall-paintings a clear red represents
the complexion of the men, and a clear pale yellow that of the women. In
this clearness of tint we miss the swartness of the Arab.
It is true he was darker than the Jew. Little, however, can be inferred
from this, for the Jews were an extremely mixed people. Abraham came from
Haran, in Mesopotamia, and is called in Deuteronomy a Syrian. He must, in
fact, have been a Chaldean. The wife of Joseph was a high-caste Egyptian.
The wife of Moses was a Cushite. And when the Israelites went up out of
Egypt ‘a mixed multitude’ went out with them. This can only mean that in
the multitude of those who threw in their lot with them there was a great
deal of Semitic blood, through the remnant of the Hyksos, which had been
left behind when the great mass of that people had been expelled from
Egypt, and also a great deal of Egyptian blood. From these sources, then,
were derived no inconsiderable ingredients for the formation of what
was afterwards the Jewish nation. The great-grandmother of David was a
Moabitish woman. Solomon’s mother was a Hittite, and one of his wives an
Egyptian. And we know that a very considerable proportion of conquered
Canaanites were eventually absorbed by their conquerors. No argument,
therefore, can be founded upon the complexion of so mixed a people as the
Jews.
In features, taking the sculptures and paintings for our authority, the
Egyptian was not a Semite. His nostrils and lips were not so thin, and
his nose was not so prominent. In this particular, which is important, he
presents indications of a cross between the Caucasian and the Ethiopian,
or modern Nubian.
Their social and political organization—that of castes, and of a
well-ordered, far-extended state—was completely opposed to Semitic
freedom and equality, in which the ideas of the tribe, and of the
individual, preponderated over those of the state, and of classes.
Religion is the interpretation of the _ensemble_. It takes cognizance of
the powers that are behind, or within, visible external nature, and of
the reciprocal relations between these powers and man. The mind of man is
the interpreter. As is the interpreter so will be the interpretation.
Now, from the hard simplicity of nature in the Semitic region, or from
the simplicity of life and thought resulting from it, or from the early
apprehension by that part of the human family of the idea of a Creator,
or from other causes not yet made out (though, indeed, it is the fact,
and not the cause, that we are now concerned with), there has always
been a disposition in the Semitic mind to think of God as one. In the
earliest indications we possess of their religious thought each tribe,
each city, almost each family, appears to have had its own God. They
never could have created, or accepted, a Pantheon. The idea of Polytheism
was unnatural, illogical, repulsive to them. The inference, therefore,
is that in the large hierarchy of heaven, which approved itself to
the Egyptian mind, there could be nothing Semitic. The religion, the
religious thought of Egypt, which so stirred the whole heart, and swayed
the whole being of the people as to impel them to raise to the glory of
their gods the grandest temples the world has ever seen, was, in its
whole cast and character, an abomination to the Semite.
Next after Religion, the most important effort of the human mind is Law.
Law is distinguishable from Religion. It is not an effort to embrace and
interpret the whole, but a general and enforced application of some of
the conclusions of that interpretation to the regulation of the conduct
of men towards each other. Its principles are those of justice and
expediency, but with very considerable limitations—not absolute justice,
but justice as then and there understood; and not in every point and
particular, but in those matters only in which evidence is possible, and
the observance also of which can be enforced by penalties; nor absolute
expediency, but again, as it is then and there understood, and limited
to such matters as admit of being carried out, and enforced, by public
authority.
This, it is plain, may be regarded—and as a matter of observation and
history is still, and has in all times been, regarded—either as something
distinct from, or as a department of, religion.
If treated as a part of religion, then either the very letter itself of
the law, or else the principles on which it is founded, and of which it
is an application, must be accepted as from God. In the former case God
is regarded as the actual legislator, and sometimes going a step further,
as the actual executor of His own law. In the latter case He is regarded,
because He is the primary source, at all events, of its principles, as
ultimately their guardian, and the avenger of their violation.
The Semitic sentiment, looked upon law in the former of these two lights.
It formed this conception of it, because the people held in their minds
the two ideas, that God was One, and that He was the Creator. A people
who have come to regard God as one will necessarily concentrate on the
idea of God all moral and intellectual attributes. Out of this will arise
a tendency to exclude all merely animal attributes, and, to a great
extent, such phenomena as present themselves to the thought as merely
human—such, for instance, as were the attributes of Mars, Venus, and
Mercury. God then, being the perfection of wisdom, justice, and goodness,
is the only source of law. He is, also, the actual Lawgiver in right of
His being the Creator. The world, and all that it contains, is His. His
will is the law of His creation. The gods of Egypt, however, like those
of Greece, were not anterior to Nature, were not the creators of Nature,
but came in subsequently to it, and were in some sort emanations from it;
the highest conception of them, in this relation, was that they were the
powers of Nature.
Now, in this important and governing matter of law, the Egyptian mind
did not take the Semitic view. God appeared to the Egyptian, not so much
in the character of the direct originator, as in that of the ultimate
guardian of the law, in our sense of these words. They had had kings who
had been wise legislators, and the complete punishment for violations of
the law would be in the life to come.
A review, then, of the whole field makes it appear highly improbable that
the Egyptians were Semites.
But if they were neither African nor Semitic, what were they? There are
not many alternatives to choose from. The process soon arrives at a
complete exhaustion. They must have been—there is no other possible race
left—mainly Aryan: that is, of the same race as ourselves.
There is no antecedent improbability in this. That an Aryan wave should
have reached the Nile was, indeed, less improbable than that others, as
was the case, should have reached the Ganges and the Thames. That one had
not, would almost have needed explanation.
That the Egyptians themselves had not the faintest trace, either of a
tradition, or of a suspicion, that it had been so, is only what we might
have been sure of. No other branch of the race, from the Ganges to the
Thames, had preserved any record of their ancestors’ migrations, or any
tradition of their old home, or of their parentage. This only shows—which
will explain much—that the migration took place at so remote a period, so
long before the invention of letters, that we feel as if it might have
resulted from some displacement, or variation, of the axis of our earth
in the glacial epoch.
That the complexion of the Egyptians is not so fair as that of Europeans,
is a remark of no weight. Europeans may have become fairer by the
operation of causes analogous to those which made the Egyptians darker.
Among the Hindoos, the Brahman, who is indubitably Aryan, is generally
as dark as the Egyptian was. The colour of the Egyptian may have been
heightened in precisely the same way as that of the Brahman; first, by
intermixture with the previous possessors of the soil, and afterwards by
exposure through a long series of generations, with but little clothing,
to the floods of light and heat of a perennially cloudless and all but
tropical sun.
They might, on their arrival, have found an Ethiopic race in possession
of the valley of the Nile, and having come from a distance with but few
women, may have largely intermarried with the conquered, and displaced
aborigines.
That there had been some intermixture may be inferred from the complexion
of the Egyptians, and from the thickening of their features.
There is also a moral argument in favour of this supposition in the fact
that the Egyptians never, even in their best days, showed repugnance to
intermarriage with the Ethiopians, or even to being ruled by Ethiopian
sovereigns. They followed Tirhakah and Sabaco into Syria just as readily
as they had followed Sethos and Rameses. We see on the sculptures the
Ethiopian Queen of Amenophis.
Had the language been manifestly Aryan in its roots and structure, this,
under the circumstances, would have been conclusively in favour of our
supposition. Its not being so is, however, not conclusive against it.
The Northmen, who invaded, and settled in Normandy, abandoned their own
language, and adopted that of France. Again, the Norman invasion led to
a great modification of the language of England, but the new tongue was
not that of the invaders. Indeed, it seems only in accordance with what
might have been expected—that the non-Aryan element in the people having
been so potent as, to a great extent, to cloud the Aryan complexion, and
coarsen the Aryan features, the language which was ultimately formed,
should not have been, to any great extent, Aryan.
We find caste existing in Egypt from the earliest times. This becomes
intelligible on the supposition of an Aryan origin. It is a parallelism
to what took place on the ground occupied in India by another, but later,
offset of this race. Caste could not develop itself spontaneously in
the bosom of an indigenous, and homogeneous people. It is impossible
to conceive such a phenomenon under such circumstances. It must be the
result of two causes: foreign conquest, and pride of blood. As to the
former, we are sure that there could have been no other means by which
the Egyptians could have been introduced into the valley of the Nile, as
they were not indigenous Africans; and as to pride of blood, we know that
this feeling exists so strongly among Aryan peoples, that it may almost
be regarded as one of the characteristics of the race. It was natural,
therefore, that, wherever they came to dwell on the same ground with a
conquered and subject population of a colour different from their own,
they should introduce this, or some equivalent, organization of society.
If they had found a dark race in Europe we should have had caste in
Europe; but here the hardness of the struggle for existence in old times,
aided by the absence of difference in colour between the conquerors
and the conquered, made it impossible. In all European aristocracies,
whatever may have been their origin, we can detect traces of this old
Aryan disposition towards exclusiveness founded on pride of blood.
In religion, which is for those times one of the surest criteria of
race, there was so close an approximation of the gods, and of the whole
system of Egypt, to those of Greece, that, as has been observed already,
the Greeks supposed that the two were identical. They were in the habit
of speaking of the deities of Egypt as the same as their own, only that
in Egypt they had Egyptian names. Of course, it is impossible for any
people to suppose that the religion of another people is identical with
its own, unless the fundamental ideas of the two systems are the same.
This similarity, then, indicates that they were both offsets from the
same stock, and that they parted from the old home after the fundamental
and governing ideas of the mythology they carried with them had been
elaborated there.
But in this matter we may go much further than Greece. If we view all the
Aryan religions collectively, we shall find that the one idea that was
the life-giving principle in every one of the whole family was the belief
in a future life. The Hindoo and the Persian, the Greek and the Roman,
the Celt and the Teuton, all alike, as if by a common instinct, agreed
in this. This, therefore, is distinctly Aryan, and no religion from which
it is absent could belong to that race. How, then, and this is almost
a crucial test, does the religion of old Egypt stand in this matter?
Exactly as it ought to do, on the supposition that it had an Aryan
origin. This was its central, its formative, its vital idea. It was this
that built the thousand mighty temples in which the living might learn
those virtues, and practise that piety, which would be their passport to
the better world to come. It was this that embalmed the bodies of the
dead, whose souls were still alive. Without it the religion of old Egypt
could never have been a living force, nor anything but the merest mummy
of a religion. At all events, without it, it could have had no origin in
Aryan thought.
Another point to be considered is that of artistic tastes and aptitudes.
These are shown most conspicuously in the architecture of a people, and
the subsidiary architectonic arts of sculpture and painting; they may
be followed also into the arts which minister to the conveniences and
embellishments of everyday life, and which are chiefly exhibited in the
style of the dress of a people, and of the furniture of their houses.
Here, again, I think the working of the Aryan mind is seen in old Egypt.
Their ideas and tastes in these matters were singularly in harmony with
the ideas and tastes that have in all ages developed themselves in the
bosom of Aryan communities wherever settled. On the whole, our taste
approves of what they did in these applications of man’s creative power,
the necessary deductions having been made for the trammels which the
fixity of their religious ideas imposed upon them; and for the fact
that all that they did were but first unaided essays, uncorrected by
comparisons with the arts of other people. When we consider what great
disadvantages in this respect they worked under, we must come to the
conclusion that no nation ever showed so much invention, or more native
capacity for art. We cannot suppose that they borrowed from any other
people the idea of the pillar with its ornamented capital; the arch; the
ornamentation of buildings with the sculptured and painted forms of man,
of animals, and of plants; the use of metallic colours; the art of making
glass; the forms of their furniture; the art of embalming the dead;
the art of writing; and a multitude of other arts which were in common
practice among them in very remote times.
The same may be said of their aptitude for science, which has ever been
a distinct characteristic of Aryans, and never of Semites. Science is
a natural growth among the former, and has appeared among the latter
only occasionally, and then evidently as an exotic. The mechanics, the
hydraulics, the geometry, the astronomy, of the old Egyptians were all
their own.
We also find among them evidences of a genius for organization in a high
degree, and of a singular power of realizing to their thoughts, and
of working for the attainment of, very distant objects, both of which
are valuable peculiarities of the Aryan mind, and in both of which the
Semitic mind is markedly deficient.
One point more. Herodotus observes that the Egyptians resembled the
Greeks in being content each of them with a single wife. On our
supposition, this is just what might have been expected. There are no
practices among mankind so inveterate as those connected with marriage;
and the ancient Egyptians, having been an offset from the race of mankind
which had originally been monogamic, could not, although they had
long been settled in the polygamic region, bring themselves to adopt
polygamy. The primæval custom of the race could not be unlearnt. We see,
too, from the sculptures that the affectionate relation between husband
and wife was rather of the European than of the Asiatic pattern. The
wife places her hand on the shoulder, or round the arm of the husband,
to symbolize unitedness, attachment, and dependence. This is done in a
manner one feels is not quite in harmony with oriental sentiment.
The last questions are—Where did they come from? and, How did they get
into Egypt? I have at times thought that they came from the mouth of the
Indus, or from the Persian Gulf, and entered Egypt by the way of the Red
Sea. If Abydos was the first centre of Egyptian power, and the balance
of historical argument inclines towards it, there seems to be no other
way of accounting for its having been so than by supposing a landing at
Myos Hormos, or Berenice, as they were afterwards called. In one of those
harbours I can imagine the _May Flowers_ of that old, old world, hauled
up upon the beach, and the stout hearts, that had crossed in them the
Indian Ocean, preparing for their inland march across the desert hills
to the wondrous river. The distance is not great. On the third day they
will drink its water. The natives they are to encounter are gentle, and
industrious. They will dispossess them of their land, and enslave them.
They will take their daughters for wives. They will increase rapidly in
their happy valley. The language they brought with them will be lost,
and a new language formed by their descendants, which will be mainly
that of the people they subdued, and with whom they intermarried. The
religion, however, and the arts they brought with them, they will never
forget; and as the centuries roll on, and they have increased greatly in
numbers, and come to have many goodly cities, and much wealth, they will
add largely both to their religion, and to their arts. But by the time
they have added to their other arts that one which will enable them to
perpetuate the memory of events, so long a time will have passed, that
they will have lost all tradition of how their first fathers came into
the valley, and how they possessed themselves of it. For them, therefore,
the history of Egypt will commence with the discovery of letters; but for
us, who are able to recover something of the history of words, of races,
and of mythologies, it will reach back into far more distant tracts of
time.
There is no reason which should lead us peremptorily to decide against
their having come by sea. There is no antecedent improbability. The
distant voyages and settlements both of the Phœnicians, and of the
Normans, show what can be achieved in very small vessels. Evidence to the
same point was again supplied by the insignificant capacity of many of
the vessels employed by some of our early trans-Atlantic explorers, and
circumnavigators. And in the spirit-stirring and invigorating era of the
Aryan migrations we may believe that some enterprises of this kind were
undertaken. At all events, there is nothing to preclude our believing
that, in the prehistoric period, Indian and Arabian vessels were wafted
by the reciprocating monsoons, to and fro, across the Indian Ocean. Nor,
indeed, are we at all obliged to suppose that those vessels were of
insignificant capacity.
But this entrance into Egypt must have taken place at so remote a date
that the physical features of that part of the world might then have been
somewhat different from what they are now. The Dead Sea might not then
have been thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and
the isthmus we have just seen canalized might then have been navigable
water.
But it will make the point in question more distinct if I endeavour to
speak more precisely about it. The immigration into Egypt could not
possibly have been an offset of the Aryan immigration into India, which
resulted in the formation of the Hindoo, or of its westward outflow,
which resulted in the formation of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons. These
dispersions must, we know, speaking broadly, have been contemporaneous.
Their date, however, as has been already observed, was so remote that no
one branch of the race retained the slightest trace of a tradition of its
original seat, or of the way in which they themselves came to their new
home, or of any particulars of the occurrence. We will suppose, then,
that the event to which they all belong, and of which each is a part,
occurred 10,000 years ago. I merely use these figures to make myself
intelligible. But the Aryan immigration into Egypt belongs to a still
more remote epoch, and to another order of events. In the stratifications
of history its place is far lower down. It is a part of what forms a
distinct and more primitive stratum. Again, for the purpose of making my
meaning distinct, I will say that it belonged to a series of events which
took place 15,000 years ago. The peoples and civilization of Europe, as
they now exist, are to be traced back to the first-mentioned of these two
world-movements. To that which preceded it may possibly be referred some
fragments of a previous condition of things in Europe which have been
enigmas to historians and ethnologists, as the Etruscans, the Finns, the
Laps, and the Basques. The Egyptians may have been a part of that first
original wave coming down freely of their own accord into Egypt. Or they
may have been driven out of Persia, or from the banks of the Indus, at
the epoch of the rise and outflow of the second wave. At all events,
this is clear, that they were no part of the second wave itself; because
their language was older than the Aryan tongue of that epoch. And if, as
appears probable, it was also older than that of the Semitic peoples,
they, too, must have come into being after the Egyptians.[2]
CHAPTER IV.
EGYPT THE JAPAN OF THE OLD WORLD.
Nec vero terræ ferre omnes omnia possunt.—VIRGIL.
Egypt was the Japan of the old world. While nature had separated it from
other countries, she had given it within its own borders the means for
satisfying all the wants felt by its inhabitants. They acted on the hint.
Their general policy was to seclude themselves, to which, however, their
history contains some conspicuous exceptions; and to exclude foreigners;
which policy, however, they, ultimately, completely reversed in the reign
of Psammetichus, as the Japanese have done in our own day; and from the
same motives. They carried the mechanical arts, and all that ministers to
material well-being, to a high degree of perfection. Like the Japanese,
they did this with what they could win from nature within the boundaries
of their own country, and under what we are disposed to regard as
very crippling disadvantages. Though, indeed, in respect of absolute
independence in the origination of characteristic trains of thought,
and of inventions, Japan, on account of the connexion of its early
civilization with that of China, is estopped from entering the lists
against Egypt. The moral sentiments of the Egyptians, and their social
and domestic life, were entirely their own: the results of the working of
their own ideas. It is this originality that makes them so interesting
and instructive a study of human development. All their customs, and all
that they did, were devised by themselves to meet their own especial
wants. They were self-contained, and confident in themselves that they
would always be able to find out both what would be best for them to do,
and what would be the best way of doing it.
Their success justified this self-reliance. All the ordinary, and many
of the more refined wants of man, were supplied so abundantly, and in so
regular and well-ordered a fashion among them, that a modern traveller
would find no discomfort, and much to wonder at and admire, in a year
or two spent in such a country as was the Egypt of Rameses the Great.
He would, indeed, be a very great gainer if he could find the Egypt of
to-day just what Egypt was three thousand years ago.
There are no other moderately-sized countries in the world so well
prepared by nature for a system of isolation, and self-dependence, as
Japan and Egypt. On a large scale China and the United States possess the
same advantage.
The action of free trade is to place all countries—even those that may be
able to produce but one commodity the world wants, be it wool or labour,
gold or iron, or even the power of becoming carriers for others—on the
same footing of abundance as the most bountifully supplied, but at the
cost of self-dependence, which, in its highest degree, means complete
isolation. Free trade equalizes advantages, making the advantage of each
the advantage of all. It does for the world on a large scale what the
free interchange of no inconsiderable variety of domestic products did
on a small scale for old Japan of the modern, and for old Egypt of the
ancient, world.
With respect to the common arts of everyday life, I think general opinion
is somewhat in error, in the direction of being unduly disparaging, as
to the state in which they were throughout the East, and on the northern
shores of the Mediterranean, at the period which precedes the first
glimmerings of history. I believe that the knowledge of these arts
was throughout that large area spread very generally. Man has no real
tradition of the discovery of these arts any more than he has of the
acquisition of the domestic animals, and of the most useful of the kinds
of grain[3] and of fruits he cultivates. What is to the credit of the
Egyptians is, that they carried the practice of them to a high degree of
perfection, and rendered them singularly fruitful, and that they added to
them much which circumstances made it impossible they could have borrowed
from any other people. Everything done in Egypt was invested with an
Egyptian, just as everything done in Japan has been with a Japanese,
character.
CHAPTER V.
BACKSHEESH.—THE GIRL OF BETHANY.
And who will say ’tis wrong?—J. BAILLIE.
One meets few travellers in Egypt who do not speak of the incessant
demands for backsheesh as an annoyance, and a nuisance. The word has
become as irritating to their temper as a mosquito-bite is to their skin;
and it is quite as inevitable. You engage a boat, a porter, a donkey:
in each case you pay two, or three times as much as you ought; and in
each case the hand that has received your overpayment is again instantly
held out for backsheesh. While on the Nile I gave one morning a cigar
to the reis of the boat. On walking away I heard his step behind me. I
turned back, and found that he was following me to ask for backsheesh.
I suppose what passed in his mind was, either that I had discovered in
him some merit that entitled him to backsheesh, or that one who was rich
enough, and weak enough, to give a cigar, without any provocation, would
give even money to one who asked for it. A friend of mine rode over a
little boy. The urchin, as he lay upon the ground writhing with pain,
and incapable of rising, held up his hand, crying out, “I die now, give
backsheesh!” An English surgeon sees a man fall, and break his arm. He
goes to his assistance, and sets the broken limb. The man asks for
backsheesh. If the wayfarer who, as he was journeying from Jerusalem to
Jericho, had fallen among thieves, had been an Egyptian, he would, while
the good Samaritan was taking leave of him, have addressed to him the
same request. An Arab helps you up to the top of the Pyramid. You pay him
handsomely, and he is satisfied. You enter into conversation with him,
and he tells you that he is the Hakem of his village; that he possesses
so many sheep, so many goats, so many asses, so many camels; that the
wife he married last, now two years ago, is thirteen years old. You look
upon him as a rich man, but, while the thought is forming itself in your
mind, he holds out his hand, and asks for backsheesh.
There is, however, nothing in such requests that need cause annoyance,
or irritation. These children—whether, or not, grown up, for they never
arrive at mental manhood—have nothing in their minds corresponding to
our ideas of pride, whether aristocratic, or republican, of a kind that
might dispose them to regard such petitions as humiliating. What pride
they have is that of race and of religion, which suggests to them the
thought that to get money in this way is only a justifiable spoiling of
the unbelieving stranger. They look, too, upon you as quite inexhaustibly
rich, while they are themselves, generally, very poor. And if you are
satisfied with their services—and they certainly always endeavour to do
their best; or if you have any good-will towards them, with which they
credit you; how is this satisfaction, or good-will, to be shown? It is
ridiculous to suppose that words will suffice. There is but one thing to
do, that is to give a little backsheesh. This rational way of settling
the matter is the way of the East. And of old, too, we know that “the
little present” figured largely in the manners and customs of that part
of the world.
In Egypt, then, to blaze up with indignation at the sight of a hand held
out towards you, is to misunderstand the people you are among. Moreover,
indignation, whatever may be the prompting cause, is very un-Egyptian.
I never met with one who had seen a native lose his temper, under any
circumstances, or under any amount of provocation. You may abuse him; you
may even beat him; but he still smiles, and is still ready to serve you.
In this way he soon makes you feel that you are in the wrong. One cannot
be angry with such people.
This ever-present idea of backsheesh may be turned to some account. I
found that the only way in which I could extract a smile, or a word, from
the native women was to hold out my hand to them, and ask for backsheesh.
That the Howaji, as he rode by, should turn the tables on them in this
way, and invert the natural order of things, by constituting himself
the petitioner, and elevating them to the position of the dispensers of
fortune, was enough to upset their gravity, and loosen their tongues.
I had gone from Jerusalem to Bethany with a young friend late from
Harrow, great in athletics, and full of fun and good spirits. We were on
foot—for who would care to go to, or return from, Bethany otherwise? and,
having arrived at the village, were inquiring for what is shown as the
tomb of Lazarus. The women of the place soon collected round us. One of
them, in the first bloom of youth, looked like a visitant to Earth, come
to enable hapless mortals to dream of the perfectness of Paradise. Her
figure would have given Praxiteles new ideas. Her face was slightly oval;
her features fine and regular; and her complexion such as must be rare
in an Arab girl, for her lips were of a rich, if of a dusky, coral, and
the rose envermeiled her nut-brown cheeks. Her eyes thought. Her beauty
was about her as a halo of light. To look upon her was fascination.
My admiration was speechless. Not so, however, my young friend’s;
for, turning to our dragoman, he said, ‘Ask that young lady if she is
married?’ My breath went from me at the sudden indignation with which she
fired up.
As she walked away, giving utterance, as she went, to some angry Arabic,
I looked into the faces of the women about us. It was evident that they
were impressed with, and approved of, the propriety of her conduct. It
will, I thought, be long remembered, and quoted, in the village as an
example of the promptitude, and decision, with which an Arab girl should
guard her reputation.
And now, I said to myself, we are in for it. She will go and fetch her
father, or a brother, or some relative assumed for the occasion, and
there will be a row. I suggested, therefore, to my young friend, ‘that
the tomb was a transparent imposture; that it could only be an excavation
in the rock, made by some mediæval monk; and that we should do better to
go on, and look at something else.’ And so we got away.
As we left the party of women, I gave them a little more backsheesh than
usual; and then told the dragoman that we would leave the place at once,
but not by the road by which we had come.
We had just cleared the village, and I was congratulating myself on our
having got off so speedily, when we encountered a flight of locusts.
I soon became absorbed in observing their ‘numbers numberless.’ They
gave me, I thought, a new idea of multitude. They blurred the sunlight
almost like a cloud. I began to capture some of them, which I now have
preserved in spirits.
While thus occupied, and with a feeling of wonder, at the infinitude of
living things around us, growing upon me, the apprehensions I had lately
felt, dropped entirely out of my mind. In this way we went on. When we
had got about three-quarters of a mile from the village we came to a turn
in the mountain path, far removed from any dwelling, and where all was
solitude and quiet. As we approached the corner, a young woman stepped
forward from behind a projecting rock, and with a gracious look, and most
engaging smile, presented my young friend with a carefully-arranged and
beautiful bouquet.
Could my eyes be deceiving me? No. It was no other than the exemplary
young creature, who, only half-an-hour back, had shown so much and such
becoming indignation.
My apprehensions, then, and precautions had been unnecessary. But,
in American phrase, ‘How dreffle smart’ to combine, in so prompt and
graceful a manner, the credit of being good with the pleasure of being
good-natured. Could anything have been better imagined in London, or
Paris?
So it seemed. But _honi soit qui mal y pense_. True, few can be as
beautiful, few as keen-witted as the girl of Bethany. But also true
that none could have been more free from thought of evil. ’Twas all for
backsheesh.
And where two rupees are a marriage portion—so much to them, and so
little to us—whose heart would condemn the bare-footed young tactician?
That day, as she returned to the village, her step, I can think, was
lighter than usual. Perhaps she did not observe the mischief the locusts
were doing to her father’s little plot of wheat.
A few days afterwards, we were riding across the hills from Bethlehem
to Solomon’s Pools. Our path lay by the side of the rude old aqueduct.
This is merely a trough of undressed stone, sunk to the level of the
surface of the ground, on the sides of the hills it winds its way among,
for about five miles, from the Pools to the town. The sinking of the
aqueduct just to the level of the surface, was a way of saving it from
the risks of being knocked over, or of falling to pieces, that was as
wise as it was simple. If it had been raised above the ground, or buried
in it, whenever it got out of order, the repair of damages would have
been difficult and costly. Originally it was carried on, five miles
further, to Jerusalem. We had, in our ride, reached the spot where the
large-hearted king (who, like Aristotle, Bacon, and Humboldt, had seen
that all knowledge was connected) had, probably, his Botanical Gardens,
in which he cultivated some of the plants he wrote about; and the _genius
loci_ had just brought into my mind, his request, suggested to him,
perhaps, by the interest he took in the fruit he was growing up here,
‘To be comforted with apples, for that he was sick of love,’ when we
came suddenly on a party of women washing clothes. If the daughters of
Bethlehem were as good-looking in Solomon’s time as they are in ours, it,
we can imagine, must have strengthened his favourable disposition towards
the place; and may go some way towards accounting for the aqueduct.
Though, indeed, this seems a little inconsistent with his preference for
apples. That, however, may have been only a temporary feeling, or, it may
have been the expression of his latest and more matured experience.
But, as to those daughters of Bethlehem now in the flesh, whom we had
come upon, while so usefully and creditably employed. They were much
amused, as it appeared, at having been caught in such an occupation, and
were laughing merrily. My young friend, as might have been expected of
him, endeavoured to increase the merriment; this he did by leaning over
his saddle, and saying, ‘Ateeni bosa.’ Had he spoken in English—though,
of course, nothing of the kind could ever have been said by him in our
downright tongue—the words would have been ‘Give me a kiss.’ The one,
to whom he appeared more particularly to address himself, blazed up
with instantaneous indignation, just like the girl of Bethany. With
angry glance, and fierce tone, she exclaimed, ‘May your lips be withered
first.’ But now I felt no apprehensions. My only thought was, that if
we came back the same way, and should, by accident, find her alone, she
would then, perhaps, hold out her hand, and say, ‘Your lips are a garden
of roses: give backsheesh.’
CHAPTER VI.
ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTER OF THE PYRAMID CIVILIZATION.
The riddle of the world.—POPE.
That the three great Pyramids of Gizeh were erected by Chufu, Schafra,
and Menkeres, the Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus of Herodotus, we now
know with as much certainty as that we owe the Pantheon to Agrippa, and
the Coliseum to the Flavian Emperors. We also know with equal certainty
that they were built between five and six thousand years ago. From these
Pyramids to the Faioum extends along the edge of the desert a region
of Pyramids, and of circumjacent Necropoleis. Not far from an hundred
Pyramids have been already noted. These were the tombs of royalty. The
uncrowned members of the royal family, the ministers of state, the
priests, and the other great men of the dynasties of the Old Monarchy,
lie buried around. Their tombs, excavated and built in the rock, are
innumerable. Some of them reaching seventy feet, or more, back into the
mountain (the tombs of the New Monarchy at Thebes were several times
as large), are constructed of enormous pieces of polished granite,
most exquisitely fitted together. Some are covered with sculptures
and paintings, traced with much freedom, and a grand and pleasing
simplicity. They describe the offices, occupations, and possessions, and
the religious ideas and practices of those for whom they were constructed.
Great was the antiquity of Thebes before European history begins to dawn.
It was declining before the foundations of Rome were laid. Its palmy days
ante-dated that event by as long a period as separates us from the first
Crusade. But the building of the great Pyramids of Gizeh preceded the
earliest traditions of Thebes by a thousand years.
In this Pyramid region, and its Necropoleis, we have a chapter in the
history of our race, the importance of which every one can comprehend. It
is a history which, while in the main it omits events, gives us fuller,
and more genuine and authentic materials than any written history could
give, for a complete understanding of the everyday life, and arts of the
people. And the time for which it gives us this information is so remote,
that there is no contemporary history of any other people, which we can
compare with it, or with which we can in any way bring it into connexion.
It has nowhere any points of contact. It is a rich stream of history that
runs through a barren waste of early time, like the Nile itself through
the Libyan Desert, with a complete absence of affluents.
Having, then, made out the position of this epoch with respect to general
history, the next point is to ascertain as distinctly as we can what
were the arts, the knowledge, the manners, the customs of the period,
that is of those who were buried in these Pyramids and Necropoleis. When
they lived, and what they were, give to them their historic interest and
importance.
The mere naked fact that the Great Pyramid was built implies that at
that, time, agriculture was so advanced, and, in consequence, so
productive, and that society was so thoroughly organized, as to enable
the country to maintain for thirty years 100,000 men while occupied in
the unproductive labour of cutting and moving the stones employed in
its construction. To which we must add the 100,000 men engaged for the
ten previous years upon the great causeway which crossed the western
plain, from the river to the site of the Pyramid, and over which all the
materials for the Pyramid were brought. Modern Egypt could not do this.
We should find it an enormous tax even upon our resources.
There is also implied in the cutting and dressing of this vast amount of
stone, the supply of a corresponding amount of tools; and as granite was
at that time used largely in the construction of some of the tombs and
Pyramids, it implies that those tools were of the best temper.
It must also be remembered that some of these Pyramids had crossed the
Nile. The unwieldy and ponderous stones of which they were constructed
had been quarried in the Arabian range, and brought across the river
to the African range on which the Pyramids stand. What granite had
been required had been brought, the whole length of the valley, from
Syené. How much mechanical contrivance does this imply! All these great
blocks had to be lifted out of the quarry, to be brought down to the
river, carried across, some even between five and six hundred miles down
the river, and then again across the cultivated western plain to the
first stage of the Libyan hills. They had to be lowered into the boats
and lifted out of them. The inclined causeway was made of dressed and
polished blocks of black basalt, a kind of stone extremely difficult to
work. It was a mile in length. And when the blocks for the Pyramid had
at last reached the further end of the causeway, they had to be lifted
into their place in a building that was carried to a height of 480 feet.
Herodotus mentions the succession of machines by which they were elevated
from the bottom to the top. The mechanical arrangements, then, must have
been well planned and executed.
In these great works we see that nothing was overlooked, or neglected.
Everything that could happen was anticipated, and calculated with the
utmost nicety, and completely and successfully provided for. This would,
in itself alone, imply much accumulated knowledge, and habits of mind
which nothing but long ages of civilization can give. No rude people can
make nice calculations, can summon before themselves for consideration
all the conditions of a problem, or take precautions against what may
happen thousands of years after their time.
If, then, we look at these structures, such as we have them now before
our eyes, and work out in our minds the conditions, both contemporary and
precedent, involved in the single fact of their having been built, we see
distinctly that we are not contemplating one of the earlier stages, but
a very advanced stage, of civilization. All traces of the inception of
the useful arts, and of social organization, are utterly wanting. We have
before us a great community which, when seen for the first time, appears,
Minerva-like, full-grown and completely equipped.
This is seen with equal distinctness in the representations of the common
arts, and of the ordinary occurrences and practices of life, as we find
them on the tombs. They are such as belong to a civilized people. Among
the former we may instance the manufacture of glass, and the enamelling
of earthenware with coloured glazes; and among the latter the making of
inventories of the property of deceased persons.
The religion, too, we see, had already attained its full development. Its
doctrines were matured, all its symbols had been decided upon, and an
order of men had been set apart for the maintenance of the knowledge of
it, and for the celebration of its services.
The hierarchy also of society was now completely established, and
had been long unhesitatingly acquiesced in. There are no indications
here either of growth, or of decay, or of any disposition to unsettle
anything. The order of society is received as the order of Nature, is
administered by a regular form of government, and crowned by a splendid
court.
But—and this is as surprising as anything we meet with belonging to those
times—they were already in possession of their hieroglyphical method of
writing, and were using it regularly and largely in their monumental
records; and, which is still more significant, had discovered how to form
papyrus-rolls, that is to say paper, for its reception. Nor is there
any indication of a time when their ancestors have been without it. In
this, as in the other matters I have mentioned, there is no substantial
difference between the primæval monarchy, before the invasion of the
Hyksos, and the revived monarchy, which flourished after the expulsion of
the Hyksos.
From whence, then, did this remote civilization come? Was it indigenous,
or was it from abroad? or, if derived from these two sources, in what
degree did each contribute? Is there any possibility of recovering any
of the early dates, or of at all measuring roughly any of the periods
of the early history? I have already said something on these questions,
and shall return to them, whenever we shall have reached any point, from
which there may appear to be emitted some ray of light which falls upon
them.
CHAPTER VII.
LABOUR WAS SQUANDERED ON PYRAMIDS, BECAUSE IT COULD NOT BE BOTTLED UP.
Faute de mieux.
It is essential to the right understanding of any age that we have a
general knowledge of its monetary and economical condition. This, which
in ordinary histories is passed over with little or no notice, does,
in truth, largely affect the character of men’s works and deeds, their
manners and customs, and even their thoughts and feelings. It had much
influence on the history of the old world: we see it distinctly at work
in that of the Roman Empire. And we are now beginning to understand how
largely it is influencing the course of events amongst ourselves at the
present moment. With respect to the Pyramids, who was to build them, the
means by which they were to be built, and that they were to be built at
all, depended on the monetary and economical condition of the Egypt of
that day. To elucidate this is to advance a step in the reconstruction
and revivifying of the period.
Herodotus tells us that he saw inscribed on the Great Pyramid how many
talents of silver (1,600 was the number) had been expended in supplying
the hands employed on the work with radishes, onions, and garlic. He says
he had a distinct recollection of what the interpreter told him on the
subject. We believe this, because he was no inventor of fables, but an
accurate and veracious recorder of what he saw and heard. The idea of
history—that is, of what is properly called history, which is exclusive
of intentional deception and misrepresentation—was the uppermost idea in
his mind. The internal evidence of his great, varied, and precious work
demonstrates this.
There is, however, another reason for our believing this particular piece
of information he gives us about the Great Pyramid, which is, that it is
in strict accord with what we know of the period to which his statement
belongs. Silver was at that time not coined but weighed, and therefore,
necessarily, the inscription would speak of such a weight of silver, and
not of so many coins of a certain denomination. At that time there were
not in existence any coins of any denomination. In the history of Joseph
we have frequent mention of money without any qualifying terms; but on
the one occasion in the narrative, where it becomes necessary to speak
precisely on the subject, Joseph’s brethren do so by saying that their
money was in full weight. Money then, we may suppose, as late as the time
of the Pentateuch, was silver that was weighed, and not coined. This is
in accordance with another statement of Herodotus, that the Lydians,
the most mercantile neighbours of the Greeks, were the people who first
coined money.
Now that the Egyptians had at this time no coined money, proves that
their taxes—as is very much the case at this day with their chief tax,
that on land—were paid in kind. In an age when silver was so scarce that
the idea of coining it, for the purpose of giving to it easy and general
circulation, had not occurred, and it was passing from hand to hand of
the few who possessed it by weight, the actual tillers of the soil,
always in the East, and not less so in Egypt than elsewhere, a poor and
oppressed class, could not have had silver to pay their rents and taxes.
The wealth, therefore, of Pharaoh must have consisted mainly of produce.
The next point is, that no profitable investments for what silver, or
precious things, a few might have possessed, were known, or possible
then. It was not only that there were no Government stocks, and no
shares paying dividends, but that there was nothing at all that could be
resorted to for such purposes. If a man had invested money in anything he
would have stood out before the world as a rich man, and so as a man to
be squeezed. Doubtless there was less of this in Egypt than elsewhere in
the East, but in those early and arbitrary days there must have been, at
times, even in Egypt, somewhat of it. People, therefore, would not, as
a general rule, have invested had it been possible. But it was utterly
impossible, for the double reason that there was nothing to invest, and
nothing to invest in.
What people invest is capital. Capital is bottled-up labour, convertible
again, at pleasure, into labour, or the produce of labour. But in
those days labour could not be bottled up, except by a very few in the
form of silver ingots. In these days every kitchen-maid can bottle up
labour in the shape of coin, which is barren bottling-up, and invest
it in a saving’s bank account, or in some other way, which is fruitful
bottling-up. I ask permission to use these incongruous metaphors, one on
the top of the other. Every grown-up person in the kingdom can bottle up
labour, and invest it; and, as a matter of fact, there are few who, at
one time or other of their lives, do not. Some have succeeded in doing
it to such an enormous amount that they might with the accumulated
store build a Pyramid greater than that of Cheops. It is, indeed, with
the labour that has been bottled up by private individuals that we have
constructed all our railways, docks, and gas works, and with which we
carry out all our undertakings, great and small, in this country. There
is no limit to our capacity for bottling up labour. It is one of our
greatest exports; we send it all over the world, to Russia, to America,
to India, and to Egypt itself. It is estimated that we store up somewhere
about 150,000,000 pounds worth every year.
But in the time of Cheops nothing of this kind was done, nor could it
have been. It is true that the nation could then produce a great deal
more food than it needed for consumption, but, at the end of the year, it
was none the richer. Its surplus labour had not been fixed and preserved
in a reconvertible form for future needs. Its surplus production had not
been thus stored up for future uses. To repeat ourselves there were,
speaking generally, no ways open to them for bottling up this surplusage
either in the temporarily barren, or in the continuously fruitful
fashion. But there were ways open to them by which they might squander,
or consume, their imperfect chances. They might, for instance, throw
away their surplus food, and capacity for surplus labour, by doing no
productive work for a portion of the year. They were engaged in this
way in the long and numerous festivals of their gods, in their funeral
processions, and other matters of this kind. The effect was the same
when they made military raids on their neighbours. To this method also
of using up their surplus labour and food they had frequent recourse. To
these matters they were disposed more than ourselves, because, unlike
ourselves, they could not save what they were thus squandering. Or they
might spend much of it in excavating, sculpturing, and painting acres of
tombs; or in piling up Pyramids; or in building incredible numbers of
magnificent temples. This explains the magnitude and costliness of many
of the works, and undertakings, of the old world elsewhere, as well as
in Egypt. The point which it is essential to see is, that they could not
bottle up their surplus labour of any kind in the time of Cheops; while
with us every form of surplus labour, even every odd half-hour of every
form of it, may be bottled up, and the interest on what has been secured
in this way may itself also be secured in like manner. The only approach
to this among them was made by the king when he built a treasury, which
we know was sometimes done by the Pharaohs, and locked up in it his
ingots of silver, and what gold, precious stones, and costly stuffs he
had acquired.
But this form of bottling up labour, and which only one man in the
kingdom could practise, had two objections. It was of the utterly barren
sort: it paid no dividends. He had no enjoyment of any kind from it. This
was the first objection; and the other was, that if it was continued too
long—and this might be the result at any moment—the man who was thus
hoarding up his treasures would prove to have been hoarding them up for
others, and not for himself; and so he would get no particle of advantage
from them.
What, then, was he to do? How was what he had to be spent in such a
manner as that he might himself get something from it? How was he to have
himself the spending of it? A Pyramid is utterly unproductive, and all
but utterly useless. It is a building that does not give shelter to any
living thing, in which nothing can be stored up, excepting a corpse,
and that cannot even be entered. Still it was of as much benefit to the
man who built it as leaving the surplus labour, and food he had at his
disposal, and the valuables he had in his treasury, unused would be. And
those who built Pyramids had at their absolute command any amount of
labour, and any amount of food. Here, then, was a great temptation to
raise monuments of this kind to themselves. What treasure they had might
as well be sunk in stones, as remain bottled up barrenly. They would, at
all events, spend it themselves, and get for it an eternal monument. They
would have the pleasure of raising themselves their own monuments. They
would have the satisfaction of providing a safe and magnificent abode for
their own mummies.
If they had had at home Egyptian Three per Cent. Government Consols, or
could have bought Chinese, Hindoo, or Assyrian Five per Cent. Stocks; or
if the thought had occurred to them, which not long afterwards did occur
to their successors, of reclaiming from the Desert, by irrigation, the
district of the Faioum; or if they had foreseen that in times to come the
Hyksos and the Persians might invade Egypt, and that possibly a rampart
from Pelusium to the metropolis, such as was afterwards constructed,
might assist in keeping them in check in the Desert, where there would
be a chance of their perishing from thirst; or if Egypt had been, like
Ceylon, a country in which mountain streams could be dammed up in the
wet season for irrigating the land in the dry; or, like Yucatan, where
enormous tanks for the storage of the rainfall are indispensable; then
it is evident that the surplus labour and food, and the silver ingots
in the King’s treasury, would have been spent in some one or other of
these ways. But some of these things were not possible in Egypt, and the
time for thinking of the others had not yet come. There was, therefore,
no alternative. It must be something as unproductive as a Pyramid, or a
temple. The intense selfishness of man, such as he was in those early
days, prevented his having any repugnance to the idea of a Pyramid all
for himself: it rather, on the contrary, commended the idea to his mind.
And so it came about that the Pyramids were built. The whole process is
as clear to us as it would be, had we ourselves, in some well-remembered
stage of a previous existence, been the builders, and not Cheops and
Chephren. We see the conditions under which they acted, and the mental
process by which they were brought to the only conclusion possible to
them.
* * * * *
The question may be propounded—Why was there given to these structures
that particular form which from them has been called the pyramidal?
Mathematics and astronomy have been summoned to answer the question; and
lately the Astronomer Royal for Scotland has, in a large and learned
work, endeavoured to prove that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was intended
to perpetuate for ever a knowledge of scientifically-ascertained natural
standards of weight, measure, and capacity. If this was the purpose of
the Great Pyramid, will he allow an old friend to ask him—what, then,
was the purpose of each one of those scores of other Pyramids that were
constructed before and after it? No two, probably, of the whole series
were precisely of the same dimensions, except, perhaps, accidentally.
All suppositions of this kind have their origin in the unhistorical, or
rather anti-historical practice of attributing to early ages the ideas
of our own times. The first requirement for enabling one to answer
this question rightly is the power of, in some degree, thinking with
the thoughts of the men who themselves built the Pyramids. Though, of
course, there is no more reason for doubting that every Pyramid in Egypt
was intended for a tomb and sepulchral monument, just for that and for
nothing else, than there is for doubting that the Coliseum was built for
the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and London Bridge for enabling people
to cross the Thames.
Sir John Mandeville, the greatest English traveller of the Middle Ages,
and who, during his thirty-three years of wandering in the East, had
served in the armies both of the Sultan of Egypt and of the Emperor of
China, writing between 1360-70, of what he had seen about twenty-five
years previously, tells us the Pyramids were the granaries Joseph built
for the storage of the corn of the years of plenty. This is instructive:
it shows how readily in ages of ignorance—the same cause still has, where
it remains, the same effect—men connect old traditions, particularly if
there be anything of religion about them, with existing objects: being
prompted to do this by a craving to give distinctness, and a local
habitation, to such traditions.
He anticipates and bars the objection that neither he, nor anyone
else, had inspected the interior of the Pyramids, for the purpose of
ascertaining whether they were adapted for granaries, by telling us that
they were full of serpents. This is set down apparently without any other
design than that of recording a curious fact, which it would be as well
to mention. And, doubtless, as far as the knight knew himself, he had no
other object. But in matters of this kind, experience teaches us that
such people do not know themselves.
Here, then, we have an instance of the way in which extremes meet. The
old knight accepts his theory without one jot or tittle of evidence in
its favour, and directly in the teeth of all that had ever been recorded
of the Pyramids. It is a theory which allows at most seven years for
their construction; and which supposes them to have been designed for a
purpose which is flatly contradicted by their form, and by all that is
seen of their exterior, and known of their interior; and, too, by the
history itself. One grain of science of any kind in the old knight would
have lost us the lesson to be drawn from his theory.
What he did was to yield to what was to him a temptation. And this, and I
say it with all due deference, is precisely what the Astronomer Royal for
Scotland appears to have done. He, too, has yielded to a temptation. The
old knight, five centuries and an half back, was tempted to find in these
mighty monuments the Biblical narrative; and he found it. The modern
Astronomer is tempted to find in them most unexpected and surprising
indications, facts, and conclusions of profoundest science; and he finds
them. Each was tempted after his kind.
History, which had only an embryonic and potential existence in the
time of the old knight, and which even now is only beginning to assume
its proper form and lineaments, and to become a living thing with power
to teach, to guide, and to save from error—formerly what was taken for
history often only misled—would readily have enabled each of them to have
escaped the temptation that was besetting him.
It is worth noticing, by the way, that Mandeville was one of the last who
saw the original inscriptions on the Great Pyramid. The construction of
Sultan Hassan’s Mosk, the materials for which were supplied by the outer
flakes of this Pyramid, was completed about the middle of the fourteenth
century. Mandeville was in Egypt immediately before its commencement,
and mentions the inscriptions. Notices of them are also to be found
in several Arabian and other writers of earlier date. These were what
Herodotus saw, and refers to. Some others, both in Greek and Latin, had
been added during the period of Ptolemaic and Cæsarian domination. When
the Father of History saw, and had them interpreted to him, they were
more than 2,000 years old. The knight of St. Albans, 1,700 years later,
looked upon them in blank ignorance. Here we have brought together, as it
were, in a single canvas, the primæval Egyptian, the inquisitive Greek,
and the adventurous Englishman. What would not one now give to behold
such inscriptions, on such a building, and with such a history? They had
stood for nearly 4,000 years; and were capable, probably, of standing
4,000 years more: at all events, at this day, we might, certainly, be
reading what Cheops had inscribed, and Herodotus and Mandeville had seen,
if (we need not say anything about Sultan Hassan) Mohamed had been less
of an ignorant barbarian. What destroyed these inscriptions, just as it
had overthrown a civilization it was incapable of reconstructing, was the
grand and luminous formula that ‘God is God, and Mohamed his Prophet.’
This, which the true believer takes for a summary of all knowledge, is,
in fact, nothing but the profession and apotheosis of all ignorance. It
does excellently well for Mecca, and still better for Timbuctoo. But,
however, as it is the summary of all knowledge, those who utter it have
attained (how easy then is the achievement) the highest point man can
reach. They can have on intellectual sympathy, or moral connexion with
the ages that preceded its announcement. So also the ages that are to
come (why there should be such ages does not appear) can never be, in
anything, one step in advance of them. God can never be anything but God,
and he never can have any prophet but Mohamed: that is to say, men must
never conceive the idea of God otherwise than as Mohamed conceived it.
This was what destroyed the inscriptions Cheops had placed on the Great
Pyramid, and turned it into a quarry for Mosks and palaces at Cairo.
Religion, however, sooner or later, has its revenge on the theology which
endeavours to confine it within narrow and inexpansive limits of this
kind. The day comes when ‘the engineer is hoist with his own petard,’
that is, when the theology is strangled with its own formularies.
History, too, which theologies generally ignore, has its revenge in
pointing, as a warning, to the indications, scattered throughout all
lands, of their former existence, and of the causes of their decay and
extinction. Religion is a living thing that, from time to time, advances
into a higher form. Theologies are often only fossils of forms of
religion that have passed away.
But to return to our question: why was this particular form given to
these tombs and sepulchral monuments? Of course, it was because this was
the form which presented itself to the minds of the men of those times as
the natural and proper form. But why did a thought, which does not appear
obvious and appropriate to us, appear to them natural and proper? It was
because in the ages that had preceded the times of the Pyramid builders,
and which had left some of the ideas that had belonged to them still
impressed on men’s minds, tools for quarrying and squaring stones had
been scarce; and it had resulted from this scarcity of tools (sometimes
it was an entire absence of them) and from the corresponding embryonic
condition of the primitive ideas of art, that the tombs and sepulchral
monuments of those ages had consisted merely of a shallow grave covered
over with a pile of inartificially heaped-up stones, or earth. That was
all that the natural desire in the survivors to perpetuate the memory of
the dead had found possible. Such was, with the Aryan race, the primæval
idea of a tomb and sepulchral monument, throughout the whole Aryan world.
Cheops and Chephren, and their predecessors for many generations on the
throne of Egypt, had acquired tools, and an unlimited supply of labour;
but they had not acquired new ideas about tombs and sepulchral monuments.
So when, with the vigour of thought, and boldness of conception, that
belonged to a young world, conscious of its strength, they resolved to
construct such tombs and sepulchral monuments as should endure while
the world endured, no other form occurred to them, excepting that of
the simple antique Aryan cairn. They wanted a tomb, and a sepulchral
monument, and nothing but a cairn could be that. And so they built the
cairns of Gizeh.
Solomon’s Temple indicated that it had been preceded by a time during
which the House of God had been a tent; the marble Parthenon that it had
been preceded by a time during which the ancestors of its architects had
built with wood.
Suppose that it were discovered that in the language of old Egypt the
word for a sepulchral monument meant literally a heap of stones, should
we not be justified by the known history of the power words have over
thought, in feeling certain that in those early times there could not
have been a man in Egypt capable of forming any other conception of a
sepulchral monument? We have some little ground for presuming that
something of the kind was at work in the minds of the builders of the
Pyramids. The force, that is to say, of words, as well as the force of
tradition, may have constrained them to adopt the pyramidal form. At all
events, we know that the word pyramid may mean the mountain, perhaps the
mound, perhaps really the cairn, the heap of stones.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GREAT PYRAMID LOOKS DOWN ON THE CATARACT OF PHILÆ.
Now I gain the mountain’s brow,
What a landscape lies below!—DYER.
There is some interest in the comparison contained in the following
figures. The Great Pyramid was originally 480 feet high. In consequence
of the sacrilegious removal of its outer courses by the Caliphs to
provide materials for the construction of the Mosk of Hassan, and other
buildings at Cairo, its height has been reduced twenty feet, that is to
460 feet. It stands at the northern extremity of the valley of Egypt. The
First Cataract is at the other, or southern extremity. These two extreme
points of the valley are separated by a distance, following the windings
of the river, of 580 miles. Throughout this distance the river falls on
an average five inches a mile. This gives an uniformly rapid stream.
To ascend this distance in a steamboat, such as are used on the Nile,
requires seven days of continuous work; no time having been allowed for
stoppages, except of course during the night. I need hardly say that the
voyage is never accomplished in so short a time. But supposing a week
has been spent in the ascent of the river, when, at the end of it, you
land at the Cataract, you are at very little more than half the height
you had reached when you were standing, at the beginning of the week,
on the top of the Pyramid. So it would be supposing the Pyramid stood
on the level of the river-bank, instead of standing, as it does, on a
spur of the limestone ridge that overlooks the valley. To think, when
you are entering Nubia, that a building in the neighbourhood of Cairo,
so many hundred miles away, is still towering nearly 240 feet above your
head, and that it has been there from an antiquity so remote that, in
comparison with it, the most ancient monuments of Europe are affairs of
yesterday, an antiquity that is separated from our own day by more than
5,000 years, makes one feel that those old Egyptians understood very well
what they were about, when they undertook to set for themselves a mark
upon the world, which should stand as long as the world endured. Judging
from what we still see of the casing at the top of the Second Pyramid,
we feel certain that, if the destroying hand of man had not stripped off
its polished outer casing from the Great Pyramid, the modern traveller
would behold it precisely as it was seen fifty centuries ago, when the
architect reported to Cheops the completion of the work.
I have been speaking of the relation, in respect of height, of the Great
Pyramid to the Cataract of Philæ only; it may, however, be noticed, for
the sake of enabling the fireside traveller to picture more readily to
his mind the peculiarity of the hypsometrical features of this unique
country, that this Pyramid looks down, and always from a relatively
greater height, on every part of the cultivated soil of the whole land of
Egypt.
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOODEN STATUE IN THE BOULAK MUSEUM.
Vivi vultus.—VIRGIL.
In the museum of Egyptian antiquities at Boulak, the harbour of Cairo,
is a wooden statue of an old Egyptian. It was found in a tomb at
Sakkara, and belongs to one of the early dynasties of the old primæval
monarchy. It is absolutely untarnished by the thousands of years it had
been reposing in that tomb. There is no stain of time upon it. To say
that it is worth its weight in gold is saying nothing: for its value is
not commensurable with gold. It is history itself to those who care to
interpret such history. The face is neither of the oval, nor of the round
type, but as it were, of an intermediate form; the features and their
expression are just such as might be seen in Pall Mall, or in a modern
drawing-room, with the difference that there is over them the composed
cast of thought of the wisdom of old Egypt. As you look at the statue
intently—you cannot do otherwise—the soul returns to it. The man is
reflected from the wood as he might have been from a mirror.
He is not a genius. His mind is not full of that light which gives
insight. He cannot communicate to others unusual powers of seeing and
feeling. He cannot send an electric shock through the minds and hearts
of a generation. He is no prophet whose lips have been touched with
fire, no poet whose words are creations, no master of philosophical
construction, no natural leader of men.
And this piece of wood tells you distinctly not only what manner of man
he was not, but also exactly what manner of man he was. How this Egyptian
of very early days thought, and felt, and lived, are all there. He was
accustomed to command. He was a man of great culture. His culture had
refined him. He was conscious of, and valued his refinement. He was
benevolent on conviction and principle. It would have been unrefined to
have been otherwise. He was somewhat scornful. He was very accurate in
his knowledge, his ideas, and statements. Very precise in his way of
thinking, and in all that he did. He shrunk from doing a wrong, or from
using an ill-placed word, as he would have from a soiled hand. He was as
clean and neat in his thoughts as in his habits. He was as obstinate as
all the mules in Spain. Had there been any other party in those days, he
would have belonged to the party of order; and, if things had gone so
far, he would not have shrunk from standing by his principles; but he
would not unnecessarily have paraded them. If he had been called upon to
die for his principles, he would have died with dignity, and with no sign
of the thoughts within. In his philosophy nothing so became firmness of
mind as composure of manner.
His servants respected him. They had never known him do a wrong thing;
and they had known him do considerate things. But they did not like him.
They could not tell why, but it was because they could not understand
him. He was an aristocrat. He cultivated and valued the advantages
his position had given him; and was dissatisfied with those whom
circumstances had forbidden should ever be like himself. He saw that this
feeling was inconsequential, but he saw no escape from it, and this vexed
his preciseness and accuracy; and he combated the disturbing thought
with greater benevolence and greater accuracy, and became more precise
where preciseness was possible. He was fond of art, of his books, and of
his garden. He was not unsocial, still, in a sense, nature attracted him
more than man; and he preferred the wisdom of the ancients to that of the
moderns.
Such was this Egyptian of between five and six thousand years ago. He was
the creation of a high civilization. He could have been understood only
by men as civilized as himself. That he was understood is plain, from
this piece of wood having been endowed with such a soul.
In the Boulak Museum is also a statue in diorite, one of the hardest
kinds of stone, carefully executed and beautifully polished, of Chephren,
the builder of the second Pyramid, with his name inscribed upon it. The
features are uninjured, and are seen by us at this day just as they were
seen by Chephren and his Court 5,000 years ago. It was discovered by M.
Mariette at the bottom of the well, which supplied the water used for
sacred purposes in the sepulchral temple attached to Chephren’s Pyramid.
This statue must have been, originally, erected in the temple; and we
can imagine that it was thrown into the well by the barbarous Hyksos,
or iconoclastic Persians, where it lay undisturbed till brought again
to light by M. Mariette. Probably the well had been filled up with the
rubbish of demolitions contemporary with the overthrow of the statue,
and, having been thus forthwith obliterated, had been lost to sight and
memory to our day.
CHAPTER X.
DATE OF BUILDING WITH STONE.
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing.—SHAKSPEARE.
Manetho tells us that in the reign of Sesortosis, a king of the third
dynasty, the method of building with hewn stone was introduced. He
reigned about 3,600 B.C. It will be observed that this date is about
thirteen centuries earlier than that assigned to the flood on Archbishop
Ushers authority, and which is placed on the margin of our Bibles; and
only between three and four centuries subsequent to the date assigned, on
the same authority, to the creation of the world. To examine, however,
this date of Manetho’s for the hewing and dressing of building stone, is
now our immediate object. A little investigation of the subject will, I
am disposed to think, show that it is inadmissible, and that it must be
thrown back to a very much more remote antiquity.
Manetho made this statement in the time of the Ptolemies. We are
therefore, under the circumstances, justified in supposing that
the author of the date, whether Manetho himself, or some earlier
chronographer to whom he was indebted for it, meant by it little more
than an acknowledgment, that he was not acquainted with any stone
buildings earlier than the reign of Sesortosis. A question of this kind
was then very much what it is now, one of antiquarian research; it being
necessary then, as now, to collect the evidence for its decision from the
monuments. But if our acquaintance with the monuments of the primæval
period is as extensive and profound as Manetho’s was, or even more so;
and if in addition, we have advanced far beyond what was possible in his
day in the direction of universal history, we may be able to show that
there is some error in his date; or at all events may be able to explain
it in such a way, that it may be brought into closer conformity with what
is now known, than it would seem to admit of, if taken literally.
It is, then, evident, that he was unacquainted with any buildings of
hewn stone earlier than the time of Sesortosis. No surprise need be felt
at this. Sesortosis reigned more than 3,000 years before the time of
Manetho. Let us recall what is the effect of 3,000 years upon ordinary
stone buildings in a country that has, during that period, been growing
and prospering.
Our Saxon forefathers used stone largely in building. One thousand years
only have passed: and now there is not a building in the country we can
point to, and say with certainty, that it was raised by their hands.
There are a few doubtful exceptions in the form of church towers. But
these, if authentic, are exceptions of the kind which prove the rule: for
when everything else disappeared, they could have been preserved only by
a combination of chances so rare that it did not occur in one out of ten
thousand cases. It was much the same after five hundred years had passed.
The Roman world was covered, in the time of Constantine, with magnificent
cities and villas. But how many of the houses that were then inhabited
are now standing?
The reasons of this are evident. First, there is the ever-acting
disintegration of natural causes. Whatever man erects upon the surface
of the earth, nature is ever afterwards busy in reducing to the common
level. Then comes fire, the best of servants, but the worst of masters,
which no dwelling-house can be expected to escape for a thousand years.
Earthquakes, too, and war have, in any long series of years, to be
credited with much destructive work. These are all in the end complete
undoers of man’s handiwork. But I am disposed to assign the greatest
amount of obliteration to the ever-changing fashions and wants of man
himself. The houses of one generation are not suited to the tastes and
requirements of the generations that succeed. They must therefore be
pulled down to make way for what men wish to have. Perhaps, they become
quarries to supply the materials needed for the new buildings. Those who
act in this way are only doing what their predecessors did, and what
their successors will do. Palaces, and the chief public buildings, in a
city are, from a variety of causes, transferred to new sites; and the
cities, of which they must be the centres, must correlate themselves to
the sites of the new buildings. Or the capital, or city, itself, may,
from, again, a variety of causes, be transferred to an entirely new site.
In either case more or less of the old city is no longer inhabited.
Sometimes the old materials are wanted, sometimes the ground upon which
the deserted buildings are standing is needed for cultivation.
If we sum up the effects of these causes, we cannot expect that the
contemporaries of the Ptolemies should have found in Egypt any buildings
dating from the first period of the Old Monarchy, that is nearly four
thousand years old. They had before them the Pyramids, which were then
certainly more than three thousand years old, and which, it is evident,
had defied all the destructive causes we have enumerated, simply on
account of their exceptional form and mass, and because the enormous
stones of which they were constructed had been so nicely fitted together
as to exclude moisture and air; and so, because they found no earlier
buildings, and because the stones of these had been so carefully and
truly wrought, they assigned, as the commencement of the practice of
building with wrought-stone, the reign of Sesortosis, that is, they
carried it back two hundred years beyond the date of the commencement of
the Great Pyramid.
This is altogether inadmissible. Men could not pass in two hundred years
from the first essays in cutting stone to the grandest stone structure,
and, in nicety of workmanship, one of the most perfect instances of
stone joinery that has ever been erected. There were great builders
long anterior to this date of two hundred years before the commencement
of the Great Pyramid. Some of the Pyramids themselves, and many of the
tombs, are older than the Pyramids of Gizeh, and even than the time of
Sesortosis. A Pyramid had been built in the Faioum as far back as the
first dynasty of all, that of Menes himself. Their system of religion,
and their system of writing, had both arrived at their perfected
condition in the time of Menes; and each of these two facts imply
considerable advance in the art of building, of course building with
stone, of which there were such ample materials everywhere throughout
the valley of Egypt. They could not have had a perfected religion, such
as was theirs, without temples. Nor is it possible that they could have
advanced to the art of writing without having advanced previously as far
as the art of cutting and dressing stone. And this is more obvious when
we consider that the very peculiarity of Egyptian writing grew partly
out of the idea that its characters were to be sculptured and incised on
stone: this is what is implied in its very name of hieroglyphics.
I do not imagine that the date we are considering was a mere fiction.
To invent history was not an Egyptian custom. What might have been
rightfully assigned to the time of Sesortosis might not have been rightly
understood, and so came to be wrongly described. They had hewn and built
with stone centuries before his time. But there was an architectural
improvement which must have commenced somewhere about his reign, which we
see perfected in the Pyramids, and which the Egyptians ever afterwards
retained, and that was the practice of building with enormous blocks of
stone, cut and fitted together with the utmost care and precision. We can
accept Manetho’s statement, when interpreted to mean this.
The Egyptians had already had a long national existence. They were a
very observant and thoughtful people. Of all people of whom we know
anything, they had the strongest craving to leave behind them grand,
and, if possible, everlasting historical monuments. But they observed
that all buildings constructed with small stones, sooner or later, but
at all events, in a few centuries, passed away without leaving a record.
They fell to the ground, or they were taken down to supply materials
for new buildings, or the stone they were built of was burnt for lime.
The consumption of lime has always been great in Egypt; and although
the limestone mountains are not far from the river, and throughout the
greater part of the country seldom more than two or three miles from
it, old buildings have always been made to supply much material for
this purpose. Mehemet Ali, notwithstanding that the limestone ridges
of Thebes were close by, threw down one of the magnificent propylæa of
Karnak to get lime for some paltry nitre-works he was setting up in the
neighbourhood. To secure, then, as far as possible, their great monuments
and tombs against these causes of decay and overthrow, they, at about the
time of the date we are discussing, changed their method of building,
and began to use such large stones, that it would generally be less
troublesome and costly to get new stone at the quarries for building
and for lime, than to overthrow an enormous structure, which could not
be done without some machinery, and much tackle and labour. But their
ideas, and the knowledge and the skill shown in these great buildings
agree with other considerations in obliging us to carry back the art
of building with hewn stone to a very remote epoch, far beyond any
contemporary monuments, and far beyond Menes, whose name is the first to
appear in the annals of Egypt, and who must have reigned not far from six
thousand years ago. At this period, we cannot now entertain any doubts
on the subject, civilization in Egypt was in a very advanced state; not
very different, indeed, from what we find it at the date of the oldest
of the still existing monuments. Upon the earliest of these we see the
public and private life of the Egyptians sculptured and painted by their
own hands. This, of course, must have required long antecedent periods
of slow advance, for in this matter it is the first, and not the later,
steps which require most time.
No inference, in respect of the point before us, can be drawn from the
preservation of buildings standing on such sites as those of Pæstum and
Palmyra. As soon as those cities began to decay, all temptation to use
the stones of old structures in the erection of new ones, or to burn
them for lime, completely ceased. They became useless and valueless, and
this it was that saved them. During the four thousand years that had
elapsed between Menes and Manetho, Egypt had been a populous country,
generally in a state of prosperity, and, during the whole of the time,
building, which often implies pulling down, had been actively going
on: every stone, therefore, in every old disused building of the early
dynasties was likely, in one way or another, to have been reused. No one
can suppose that in such a country as ancient Egypt the pressure of this
temptation would be long resisted.
* * * * *
The object of these pages is to present to the reader the thoughts on
Egypt, as it was and as it is, which arose in the author’s mind during a
tour he made last winter through the country. Among these thoughts, as I
intimated at the beginning of this chapter, a prominent place is occupied
by chronological questions, for the dates of early Egyptian history do
not accord with those of the popularly-received system. It therefore
becomes necessary to revert to the grounds of that system, as well as to
examine and ascertain the particulars of the chronology of Egypt.
In this indispensable department of primæval history it is possible
that we may have been misled by a very natural misapprehension as to
the character of the earlier portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. We read
them as if they were addressed to ourselves, and as if their object was
historical. These are, both of them, erroneous and misleading ideas. It
is evident, on the face of the documents, that their writers had in view
no readers excepting those for whose immediate behoof they were composed,
and no objects excepting religion and patriotism. Their aim was to form
the Israelites into a people by the instrumentality of a Code, sanctioned
and enforced by religion. The writings, therefore, necessarily lay a
foundation for the religion, give an exposition of it, and set forth the
motives for its observance. The Code is the point of view from which
the religion, and the formation of the people that from which the Code,
is to be regarded. History is no more their object than science. They
do, of course, contain a part, and that a most important part, of the
history of mankind; for, in carrying out their aim, they give much of the
history of a people that was destined to have a great, and permanent, and
ever-growing effect on the world. But it is important to observe that
even this they contain only incidentally. To us both their religious
aims, and their incidental history, give them a value which cannot be
over-estimated. We shall, however, only fall into mistakes if we lose
sight of their primary, limited, Hebrew, religious purpose, and regard
them as universal history.
This is a question of broad as well as of minute criticism—of the
interpretation of the whole as well as of particulars. Are these
Scriptures to be regarded as containing the religion and the history,
limited to the point of view of the religion, of one of the smallest of
all people, or as containing the whole primæval history of man, in such a
sense that nothing but what appears to be in harmony with what has come
to be their popular interpretation, can be taken into consideration? It
was for many ages an unavoidable mistake to entertain respecting them
the latter assumption. (That some of the elements of Hebrew religious
thought were subsequently taken up into the religious thought of a
very considerable portion of mankind does not affect the question
immediately before us.) It maybe, precisely, the attempt to maintain this
misconception of their nature which is now causing so much confusion of
thought and ill-feeling. If regarded in their true light, no documents
of the old world are more precious to us historically (I am not speaking
of them in any other sense now); for, to refer to that which is the chief
concern of man, if the great lesson of history is to teach us that it has
itself no meaning, purpose, or value, excepting so far as it is the story
of the intellectual and moral growth of the race, and that this double
growth is the paramount object of national and of individual life, then
how precious and how luminous a portion of history do these documents
become!
But this value is very much lessened, and this light obscured, by the
determination to find in them, not a part, but the whole of primæval
history. The civilization of Egypt, which reaches back into so remote
a past that the Pyramids were monuments of hoar antiquity when Abraham
saw them, and the civilization—perhaps contemporary with the date of the
Pyramids—which existed on the banks of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and
the Yankse Kiang, must be made harmoniously to find a place by the side
of what is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. So must the mythology,
and the moral and intellectual aptitudes of the Aryan race of man. So
must also the knowledge to which we have attained of the history of our
globe itself, and of the succession of life upon it. This process has
already been passed through with respect to the discoveries of astronomy.
Against them there was a long and fierce struggle. At last everybody
admitted both that what astronomers taught might be believed, and that
the Hebrew Scriptures did not teach astronomy. There is no reason for
confining to astronomy the rule that was established in its favour. It
must be extended so as to include our knowledge of the greatness and the
remoteness of Egyptian civilization, and every other kind of knowledge.
We need not, and we must not, so interpret the Hebrew Scriptures as to
reject on their authority, or even to feel repugnance to accept, any
clearly-established facts. To make this use of them is to wrest them to a
purpose for which it is clear they were never intended.
Their historical value to ourselves is only an incident and accident of
their designed purpose: that was to teach to the Israelites their code,
and to give them motives for observing it (which has come to be to us a
part of history), and not to teach history to us. The idea of history,
taking the word in the meaning it has for us, did not exist then. It
could not, indeed, have existed then, for everything has its own place
and time, and the time for history had not come then. First, the seed is
deposited in the ground, then comes the tender shoot, next the stem and
blades, after that the plant flowers; last of all comes the full corn
in the ripe ear. Those early days were the time when the materials were
in many places being collected, out of which we have to construct human
history. It is fortunate for us that in those first times men did not
forestall the idea of history: that would have prevented their attending
singly to what they were themselves doing, and to the thoughts that were
at work in their own minds.
CHAPTER XI.
GOING UP TO THE TOP OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.
How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low:
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.—SHAKSPEARE.
Of course you listen to anything people have to say on a subject about
which you are at the moment interested. Here are some specimens of what
I heard about the Pyramids, when I was on the point of visiting them.
A gentleman, who had that day returned from making the ascent, was, as
he sat at the _table d’hôte_, overflowing with his impressions. His
complexion and voice were somewhat womanly. As might have been expected,
he strongly advised that everyone should attempt what he had himself
just accomplished. There was, however, some novelty in the advantage, he
thought, would result from the ascent, as well as in the logical process
by which it was to be attained. ‘Go up,’ his words were, ‘go up by all
means. The religious effects are very good. Elevated to so enormous a
height above the earth, on so vast and imperishable a structure, you feel
deeply and profitably the littleness, the feebleness of man.’
I asked the owner of a New York dry-goods store, who was rushing over
the world for the purpose of adding to the stock of his ideas—a very
creditable effort in a man of his antecedents and occupation, and who was
now half-gray—what he thought of the Pyramids? ‘Well,’ was his reply,
‘they are a matter biggish. But I don’t think them much, for we can
have just as good Pyramids in Central Park, New York, if we choose to
spend the money to have them. A Pyramid is nothing but dollars. How many
dollars do you say one would cost? Well, we have got all these, and many
more, to spare. We have got the Pyramids in our pockets, and can set them
up any day we please.’
These are specimens (and additional instances might be given) of the
ideas of people who are eminently estimable, and perfectly contented with
themselves and with the world. Indeed, in holding and expressing them,
they must think that their eyes are not quite as other men’s; that they
can penetrate a little further beyond the surface of things. Yet one
meets with many a man quite as estimable, though perhaps not quite so
contented with himself and with the world, who would be disposed to ask
what good would his life do him, if told that he must swop ideas with
them. The prospect would be as little attractive to him as that of the
exchange of his religion for the creed of an ancient Briton, or Cherokee
Indian. But variety is pleasant; and the world is a big place with plenty
of room for honest folk of all sorts.
An acquaintance (I trust he will allow me to quote him here), in whose
mind at the moment artistic must have preponderated over historical
associations, standing unawed, and even unmoved, in front of the Great
Pyramid, relieved his mind to me, by giving utterance to the following
piece of honest profanity:—
‘I can’t bring myself to take the slightest interest in these
Pyramids. They don’t possess one principle, one element, one feature of
architecture. They are nothing at all but heaps of stones.’
On my first visit to the Pyramids of Gizeh it was too windy for anyone
but an Arab to think of making the ascent. On my second visit the day was
all one could wish, and so four of our party went up to the top of the
Great Pyramid. It was my fifty-fourth birthday. This seemed to myself
rather a reason for not making the effort. My climbing-days were done.
But my young friend, late from Harrow, and great in athletics, thought
differently. ‘You mustn’t give in yet,’ he urged. ‘You must go up. It is
what everyone ought to do. What is the use of having come all this way
if you don’t go up? You will be sorry afterwards if you don’t. One would
come a long way to have a chance of doing it.’ As this was very much
like what one used to think oneself some thirty, or so, years since, the
exhortation seemed reasonable and good. We ought to endeavour to keep
ourselves young in body as well as in mind. We ought not to give in by
anticipation. It will be time enough when we can’t help ourselves. And so
I went to the top.
By the way a party for travel in Egypt, if pleasure, not work, is the
first object, may be a large one, and need not be composed entirely of
historians and philosophers. All liberal pursuits and reasonable ways of
looking at things may be represented advantageously. A naturalist and a
geologist are almost indispensable. A member of the Ethnological Society
might, at times, turn up worth his salt. A Liverpool, or Manchester,
man whose ideas are of commerce, manufactures, and machinery; of the
value of things, and how to do things, would often serviceably recall
speculation to the standard of present utility. But by all means have
a young fellow late from Harrow, and still great in athletics. He is
always to the front, like a cork to the surface of the water. He is never
afraid of work, or of roughing it. He is always good-tempered and merry.
Always glad to hear what has anything in it; is impatient of twaddle,
and can’t stand assumption. Some day he will himself be an Egyptologer,
or geologist, or something of the kind. At present he is tolerant, and
allows these things to those who like them. What he likes is a rousing
gallop on the Sheik’s horse, a girl that has no nonsense in her, a
champagne luncheon, a good cigar. Some things, and some chaps he thinks
slow, but the general rule is ‘all right.’ A Nile party is the better for
this ingredient. We mediævalists must not be over-reasonable. He will
help us a little to keep this tendency in check. Besides, we were once
young ourselves, while our friend was never, though we all hope he may
live to be, an old fogie.
Four of us went to the top together. But _place aux dames_, and no young
lady, from the days of Cheops, better deserved the first place than she
who, on an early day in January, 1871, ascended his Pyramid with eye as
bright, and foot as sure, as a gazelle’s. If he still haunts the mighty
monument in which he was laid, after having bent his people to its
erection for fifty years, he must have thought, as the Lily of the North
stood on its summit, that he was well repaid.
For ne’er did Grecian chisel trace
A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace
Of finer form, or lovelier face.
A foot more light, a step more true,
Ne’er from the heath-flower dashed the dew;
E’en the light hare-bell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread.
My young friend, late from Harrow, and great in athletics, was, of
course, one of the four.
And so was an older friend of mine, with whom and another lad, in the
year 1836, each of the three being then seventeen years old, I had gone,
I believe, the first open-boat cruise on our home rivers. We started from
Bedford and went to York and Hull, and back again, 700 miles in an open
boat, pulling it all the way ourselves, and lying down in it at night
to sleep, accoutred as we were in Jersey frock and canvas. During the
whole expedition we cooked our meals ourselves. From that boat we had
looked forward into the unknown world before us: I can still recall the
anticipations, visions, and resolves of that time. Now, from the top of
the Pyramid of Cheops, we looked back on our course, so far, through the
world. Well, just like other people, we had had each of us to make some
discoveries for himself, and to pay for his experience. But the fight had
not been always against either of us. On the whole we had not found it a
bad world. We were glad, after thirty years of the chanceful life-battle,
to meet again, on the summit of the Great Pyramid, if not quite
unscathed, yet not crippled. I suppose we each thought that the time to
come could not be as pleasant as the interval had been that separated our
two excursions.
The Great Pyramid is built of extremely hard and compact nummulitic
limestone. The third was cased, at all events, to half its height,
perhaps completely, with enormous blocks of granite. A few are still in
their places, but most of them have been thrown to the ground. A small
portion of the external casing at the top of the Second Pyramid is still
uninjured. It is of so pale and fine a limestone that it looks as if it
were of polished white marble.
I found the best way of getting an impressive idea of the enormous
magnitude of these Pyramids was to place myself in the centre of one
side, and to look up. The eye then travels over all the courses of stone
from the very bottom to the apex, which appears to pierce and penetrate
the blue arch above. This way of looking at the Great Pyramid—perhaps it
is a way which exaggerates to the eye its magnitude unfairly—makes it
look Alpine in height, while it produces the strange effect just noticed.
While making the ascent, the Hakem of the Arab tribe, which supplies
guides and assistance to travellers, took the opportunity of a pause for
breath to press upon me the purchase of some old coins. I told him I
would look at them when we had done with the Pyramid. ‘I am satisfied:’
he replied; ‘an Englishman’s word is as good as his money.’
Many people shrink from ascending the Pyramid from a fear of becoming
dizzy and confused on seeing, as they fancy they must, that they are up
so high without anything to hold on by. This sight need never be seen.
You are going up against the face of the mountain; attend then to what
you are doing. Look where you are putting your feet, which you must do,
each step being three feet high, more or less and you will never see
once, from the bottom to the top, how high you are above the earth, or
that you have no supports, except when you turn round on sitting down to
get breath, and when you reach the summit. The same is true to a great
extent even of the descent, although your back is then turned to the
mountain. Attend to what you are about—that is, to the place where you
are going to set your foot—and there will be nothing at all to make you
dizzy.
One of the exhibitions of the place is that of an Arab climbing from
the bottom to the top and coming down again, in what appears to the
spectators, an incredibly short space of time. The charge for the
performance is a few francs. As they are slim, long-legged, active
fellows, they are well-adapted for this kind of thing. One who was proud
of what he could do in this way was challenged by my young friend to a
foot-race for half-a-crown. There was not an Arab present but thought it
would be a hollow thing. It was not a hollow thing at all. But their man
it was who came in second, Harrow winning by a few yards.
CHAPTER XII.
LUNCHEON AT THE PYRAMIDS—KÊF.
Mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landscape round it measures.—MILTON.
On our first visit to the Pyramids we had our luncheon in the large
granite tomb a little below, and to the south-east of the Sphinx. One
feels that there is an incongruity, a kind almost of profanation,
in using a tomb, particularly such a tomb, for such a purpose. Its
massiveness, at all events, makes you conscious of a kind of degeneracy
in the present day. A sense of unworthiness and littleness comes over
you. What business have we, who send our dead to heaven, and have done
with them, to disturb the repose of those on whose sepulchres a fortune
was spent, if not by their relatives, at all events by themselves? But
on this occasion there was little choice. Outside the sun was scorching,
and the wind was high, and the only alternative was the hotel. But that
was impossible: to be shut up in a hideous, plastered, naked room of
yesterday, within a few yards of the Great Pyramid. One would rather go
without one’s luncheon for six months together than have to bear the
stings of conscience for having so outraged the memory of Cheops and
Chephren. And so we took our luncheon that day in the tomb of one of the
great officers of the court of those old times.
It was formed entirely of enormous blocks and monolithic piers of
polished granite. I do not know of how many chambers it consisted, for
being considerably below the level of the surrounding sand-drift, and
the roof having been entirely removed, a few hours’ wind must always
completely fill and obliterate it. The Arabs then have to clear it out
again. When we were there four chambers were open. These are all long
narrow apartments. The one by which we entered runs from west to east.
At right angles to this are two other apartments, their axes being from
north to south. The fourth we saw was at right angles to the north end
of these two parallel chambers. It was in the southern extremity of
the westernmost of the two parallel chambers that our party took their
places. The comestibles were laid on a cloth spread on the sand, with
which the floor, to the depth of some inches, was covered; the party
reclined on the sand around, or sat on blocks of granite arranged for
seats. The hungry Arabs perched themselves on the brink of the tomb,
waiting for the fragments of the feast, like vultures. The pert popping
of the champagne corks again disturbed ones sense of the fitness of
things.
How was it possible to be there, and not feel the _genius loci_? The
whole of this edge of the desert, from Gizeh to the Faioum, is one
vast Necropolis. The old primæval monarchy lies buried here; at Gizeh,
Sakkara, Dashour, Abusseir, and throughout all the spaces between and
beyond, to the Faioum. No other empire has been so buried.
In this wide field of the dead how much of early thought and feeling,
and life is storied. How much contemporary history in wood and stone,
in earthenware, and glass, and paint. Contemporary history—not history
composed, heaven save the mark! centuries after the events, often by
authors (sometimes truly the authors of all they tell) who did not
understand their own time, often merely for bread and cheese;—not
composed twentieth-hand from writings which, even at their original
source and fountain-head, were the work of men who were not agents in
what they endeavoured to record, and who, not knowing truly the events,
their causes, or their consequences, were but ill qualified to write the
record;—not composed when the feelings and ways of thinking of the time
were no longer living things, but had died out, and other thoughts and
feelings come in their place, and when what the writer had to construct
had become obscure by party prejudice in politics and religion, and by
social misunderstandings. Nothing of this kind is here. What is here is
contemporary history, presented in such a form that it is the actual
pressure and embodiment of the heart and mind of each individual. Here
are the occupations he delighted in, the sentiments that stirred him,
the business that was the business of his life, the clothes he wore, the
furniture he used, the forms religious thought had assumed in his mind,
the forms social arrangements had assumed around him. No people have ever
so written their history. Here is a biography of each man as he knew
himself. Here every man is a Boswell to himself. It is a nation’s life
individually photographed in granite.
We sat after luncheon taking our _kêf_, apparently absorbed in the
contemplation of the little fantastic wreaths of cloud formed by our
cigars. But the few remarks that were made showed that the thoughts of
most of us were occupied in resuscitating the past, and repeopling the
sacred terrain around with the grand impressive ceremonies and funeral
processions of five thousand years back. What a scene must this have
been then. The mountains—for that is the meaning of the Pyramids—not
rugged and dilapidated as now, but cased with polished stone, each with
its temple in front of it. The many smaller Pyramids that have now
disappeared, or are only seen as mounds of rubbish, then acting as foils
to their giant brethren. Great Pyramids reaching all along the foot of
the hills as far as the eye could see towards the south: some of these
still figure in the landscape. The Sphinx was standing clear of sand
with a temple between his paws. Everything was orderly, bright, and
splendid. The dark red granite portals of the thousand houses of those,
who slept in the city of the dead, were standing out conspicuous upon the
sober limestone area, unchequered by a plant, unstained by a lichen. The
black basalt causeways traversed the green plain from the silver river
to the Pyramid plateau. The whole scene was alive with those, who were
visiting, and honouring, the dead, and preparing their own last, earthly
resting-places. Above all was spread out the azure field of the Egyptian
sky.
* * * * *
The word _kêf_ is used everywhere throughout the East, from
Constantinople to Cairo, to convey an idea, that is not European. It is
the idea of sensational comfort combined with mental repose, produced by
the narcotic leaf, when used under circumstances, where the comfort and
the repose are felt. There is no _kêf_ in its use as you walk or drive,
or even talk with the usual effort and purpose. You must be seated, and
in a kiosk, or garden, or some pleasant place, where the _entourage_
feeds the fancy through the eye, spontaneously, with delightful, and
soothing images. You must not be urging the mind to exert itself.
Conscious mental exertion, equally with bodily, is destructive of _kêf_.
The thoughts must be pleasant, and they must come, too, of themselves,
from surrounding objects. Bodily sensations must be so lulled, and yet,
at the same time, so stimulated, as to be in perfect accord with the
stream of thought, that is languidly, and dreamily, floating through the
mind.
CHAPTER XIII.
ABYDOS.
Series longissima rerum
Per tot ducta viros antiquæ ab origine gentis.—VIRGIL.
In descending the river we stopped at Bellianéh to visit Abydos. It
was from Abydos, the primæval This, that Menes came, whose name stands
first on the list of Egyptian kings. From it also came the dynasty that
succeeded that of Menes. The great extent of cultivable land—the valley
here opening out to double its usual width—gave space enough for a rich
and populous state, the rulers of which appeared to have overpowered
their neighbours, and, by consolidating their conquests, to have formed
an enduring monarchy. As the great preponderance of population and wealth
was thenceforth in the Delta and Lower Egypt, the head of the Delta
became the centre of gravity, and so, by natural causes, the centre of
affairs, and the site of the capital.
Was This, in Upper Egypt, the first seat of Egyptian power, and if so,
how came it to be so? These are questions of much interest, the important
bearing of which on early Egyptian history has been indicated already.
The landing-place at Bellianéh is overshadowed by a grove of palms, the
crowns of which are tenanted by turtle-doves. Among the palms we saw
that the ground was covered with crude bricks, lately moulded, and going
through their first stage of desiccation. We were soon surrounded by a
crowd of bare-legged idlers from the town, most of whom were boys.
We had the day before despatched a telegram to the Governor of Bellianéh
to request him to have donkeys in readiness for our party. The telegram,
however, had not arrived; we, therefore, sent into the town to collect
the beasts our party would require. Before long they came; but most
of them were ill able to carry even their own wasted weight. Few had
bridles, or anything that could have been mistaken for a saddle: a piece
of ragged cloth or matting, merely intended to hide their distressing
sores, was all that was on most of them. The first I mounted sank to
the ground under the weight of ten stone ten. At last, the three most
impetuous of our party selected the three least emaciated, and started
for Abydos. Later in the day our telegram arrived, and the Governor
immediately sent down to the landing a dozen fairly-conditioned animals;
but it was then too late in the day for the rest of the party to
undertake so long a ride.
It was the 3rd of January. The wheat was about two feet high, and the
beans were in flower. The word field would mislead. As we rode on, mile
after mile, there appeared to be no divisions of the land, except the
limits of the different kinds of grain growing upon it. We crossed two or
three large canals by earthen bars, which had been thrown across them.
The use of these bars is, as soon as the river begins to sink, to retain
the water with which the canals are then full. We also passed several
villages. At the first of these our dragoman engaged the services of
a stout young fellow, who came to accompany us, provided with a heavy
staff, about two inches or a little more in diameter, and five feet
in length. The villagers about Abydos have a bad character, and are
occasionally troublesome, and this young fellow was to be our escort and
guide. We did not ride through any of the villages on our way, for the
road was always made to skirt the outside of the walls. At the gate of
one we passed, we saw a woman and a lad seated on the ground, playing at
a game resembling draughts. The board was marked out on the road, which
had also supplied the men, in the form of pieces of camel dirt. The
sight gave one a little shock. These poor women, however, spend no small
portion of their lives in converting the raw material of this natural
product into manufactured fuel, and the whole of their lives in the odour
of its smoke.
In the open, by the roadside, we saw some rectangular enclosures of about
six yards by four. In each of them a family was residing. I supposed
they were engaged in watching the crops. As these enclosures consist of
nothing but four thin screens, about seven feet high, of wattled reeds,
their inmates, if that is an appropriate term, must sleep, wrapped in
their burnouses, beneath the stars. The reed fence can only be intended
to keep out the wind, the jackals, and the eyes of curious passers-by;
but Arabs do not mind exposure at night as long as their heads are
wrapped up. I saw, at Assouan and Miniéh, several sleeping in this way,
in the open market-place, on their goods. At Suez, being out at dawn, I
saw in the Arab town the men sleeping outside their huts on a morning
when the mercury had sunk to freezing point. With us Europeans, the first
thought is to keep the feet warm. About this extremity of his personal
domain the Arab is heedless. His care, like the nigger’s, is for his
head—-just as the Esquimaux dog, when sleeping, covers his nostrils with
his bushy tail, or the pig buries his snout in the straw, so does the
Arab, when he makes himself up for the night, envelope his whole head in
some thick wrapper. Is this a consequence of his practice of never having
his head uncovered during the day? I suppose they are none the worse for
breathing and rebreathing the same air all night, with the exception of
the little that may filter through the wrapper.
The rubbish mounds of Abydos are, by their height, and the extent of
ground they cover, infallible witnesses to the importance of the old
primæval city. From among these mounds two grand structures of the days
of Sethos and Rameses have been disinterred. One is a palace, the joint
work of father and son. That the genius of Egypt was, as might have been
expected at this culminating era of its glory, advancing, and full of
invention, is seen in the ceilings of the halls of this palace: they are
vaulted. These vaulted roofs, however, are not arches of construction,
but formed by placing the enormous slabs of sandstone, of which the roof
is made, not with their broad, but with their narrow, faces on the plane
of the ceiling. This gave a roof of vast thickness, from which the vault
of the roof was excavated. The colouring of these roofs, as of all the
decorations of these two grand buildings at Abydos, is remarkably good
and well preserved.
The other building, which was dedicated to Osiris, who was supposed to
have been buried here, was once his most sacred and frequented temple. It
was much enlarged and embellished by the great Rameses. The inner walls
of the sanctuary were encrusted with alabaster, which still remains. I
saw nowhere else Egyptian work in purer taste, nor sculptures so well
preserved, both in form and colour. One might have supposed that some of
them had been chiselled and coloured last week. I observed a figure of
the great king so absolutely untouched by time, that the colour of every
bead in his necklace, or collar, is quite fresh.
It was here that was found the celebrated tablet of Abydos, which
Rameses put up in the temple of Osiris, inscribed with the names of
all the kings who had preceded him. This and its fellow tablet, placed
at Karnak by Tuthmosis III., about two hundred years before the time
of Rameses, are invaluable, as they show that the records preserved by
the priests in writing, of which we have transcripts in the dynasties
of the priest Manetho, and in the Turin papyrus, are in accord with
the monuments. The monumental evidence, it may be observed, is of two
kinds. Speaking generally, it is absolutely contemporary—the record
having been sculptured in the lifetime of the man, the memory of whose
actions, possessions, and thoughts it preserved. There are, however, in
these two tablets of Karnak and Abydos, most precious exceptions to the
contemporaneousness of the monumental history. How strong and clear was
the historical sentiment in the mind of these old Egyptians! We not only
find each generation endeavouring to perpetuate a knowledge of its own
day, but, in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries before the Christian
era, we find Egyptian kings endeavouring to transmit to posterity the
names, and the order of their predecessors. This tablet of Abydos is one
of the glories of our National Museum.
The cemeteries of Abydos were very extensive. Their extent grew out of
the wish, very generally felt among well-to-do and educated Egyptians,
to be laid themselves where Osiris, the judge of all, had once been laid.
As I have intimated, the site of This may, perhaps, cast some faint ray
of light on the question of how, and where, the first ancestors of the
Egyptians had entered Egypt. It throws, however, a flood of light on the
question of the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. We have seen that in
Egypt, in consequence of the absence, or scantiness of rain, there are
no springs, and that another consequence of this want of rain is that
the nitre, which the soil collects from the air, is not dissolved and
washed away, but accumulates to such a degree as to render the water
of the wells, which has percolated from the river through the soil,
brackish, and unfit for drinking. Now the distance of This, in a direct
line from the river, is seven miles and a half; if, then, we put these
points together, we shall see in them another argument for the extreme
antiquity of Egyptian civilization, besides those drawn from the use of
writing, the mythology, and from the absence of anything like a beginning
in the history of the useful arts, and of their social arrangements.
The combined force of these arguments amounts to a demonstration that
civilization was not in its infancy six thousand years ago, at the era of
the Thinite dynasties.
Here is the form of this contributory to the demonstration. An
uncivilized people would undoubtedly have placed their town on the banks
of the river, close to the water. But a people among whom labour is
organized, and who will be willing because they are civilized, to go to
a great deal of trouble and expense for an adequate object, instead of
giving up much good land for a large city, and on a site, too, where it
would be troubled by inundations, would prefer to build it at a distance
from the river, where the land was not suitable for cultivation, and
where it would be safe from inundations. But in order to do this they
must cut a canal seven and a half miles long at the least, and so bring
the water of the river to the city. These thoughts the Egyptians had, and
this work they accomplished, in the ages which preceded Menes. No savage,
or semi-savage people would have entertained this scheme of the canal, or
would have carried it out. The site of This is thus alone strong evidence
of a very advanced contemporary civilization, no one can tell how many
centuries before the time of Menes; but at least for a sufficient tract
of time to allow of the growth of a powerful state, capable at last in
his time of imposing a dynasty on Egypt. The first cities in Egypt must
have been on the banks of the river; or in places where the _háger_ was
near the bank. The first comers did not cut canals seven and a half miles
long at least; and none but a people already powerful could protect such
a canal, upon which their existence depended. The people, then, were
already civilized and powerful who placed their city on such a site as
that of This.
There were kings in Egypt, we may be sure, before Menes. The Egyptians
themselves spoke of his predecessors as ‘the deceased,’ that is, those
human rulers whose names had been lost. It was in the time of these
prehistoric, we may even say premythical kings, that this This Canal,
and indeed, probably, that the great Bahr Jusuf Canal itself, which is
throughout Egypt a second Nile, were constructed. There were, therefore,
at that day, men who were as great in hydraulic engineering as any who
came after them, but who yet lived at so remote a time, that no trace of
them could be found even in the far-reaching and tenacious traditions of
Egypt. If the Bahr Jusuf, which passed by This, was older than the city,
so much the better for our argument.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FAIOUM.
Opera basilica.—BACON.
The history of the reclamation of the Arsinoite nome, or department,
now the Faioum, would, if it had been preserved, or could be recovered,
throw much precious light on the antiquity and power of the civilization
of the primæval monarchy. But the simple fact that its details had been
lost, even in the remote days of Theban learning and magnificence, when
Egypt was at the summit of its greatness and glory, possesses of itself
much historical value, for it shows at how much earlier a day the great
undertaking had been carried out; and that, as we know, by such a system
of hydraulic works, the newly-won district, too, having been adorned with
such cities and buildings, as leave no doubt about the high character
of its (were it not for the remains of these works and structures)
prehistoric civilization.
The Faioum is, geographically, a basin formed by a depression in the
Libyan range, about sixty miles to the south of the Pyramids of Gizeh.
The basin is about the size of Oxfordshire, or Surrey, that is to say, it
contains about 750 square, miles. More than 100 of these may be occupied
by the Birket el Keiroon, a natural lake, which forms its northern and
western boundary. This large piece of water resembles a rude crescent,
with its convex side to the north and north-west, and its concave side to
the south and south-east. On the former side the contiguous desert rises
into a hilly ridge; this boundary being in fact an offset of the African
range. The other side of the lake looks upon the dry and shelving descent
of the basin, which, from its southern summit down to the edge of the
water, has a fall of about 100 feet, being about fifteen miles across.
There are considerable discrepancies as to the precise amount of this
fall; some measurements making it more, and some less than the 100 feet
here given.
When things were in their natural state, undisturbed by man, the Birket
el Keiroon was a lake, as it is now. In those days, as in our own, it was
supplied with water, just as the pool within the enclosure of Karnak,
and other pools, and all the wells in Egypt, by natural infiltration;
for the water of the river percolates readily through the porous strata,
and flows into any sufficiently deep depressions, or excavations. The
existence of the oases also in the desert must be accounted for in this
way.
The Bahr Jusuf Canal had, at some unrecorded date, been brought along
the foot of the Libyan range. Starting from Diospolis Parva, by the
air-line forty miles below Thebes, it had traversed the whole of the
rest of the valley; then, passing through the Delta, it had reached the
sea, somewhere in the neighbourhood of modern Alexandria; a distance,
again, in the air-line of 400 miles; though, of course, this falls very
far short of giving the measure of its ceaseless sinuosities. This Grand
Canal of old Egypt now carries off about a twenty-eighth part of the
water that passes over the cataract of Philæ. In its course it flows
along the depressed range that forms the eastern boundary of the Faioum.
In this depressed range there is a ravine through which in early days,
at the season of the inundation, some of the overflow of the Bahr Jusuf
found its way to the top level of the Faioum. It is not easy now, to
decide whether it got through naturally at first, or whether the ravine
was canalized to enable it to pass through. At all events it is evident
that, if there had originally been a natural passage, it was levelled and
enlarged by man availing himself of natural fissures and depressions. But
however this might have been, the inundation having found its way on to
the upper level of the Faioum, appears to have formed there an immense
morass.
The first condition, then, of the district had been a dry desert,
precisely resembling any other part of the desert, except that it slanted
from what may be spoken of as the rim of its mussel-shell-like depression
down to the spring-fed Birket el Keiroon. Its second condition, that now
before us, is what was brought about by the water of the inundation,
that had in some way or other been let into the district: it formed
wherever it was retained, and chiefly on the upper plateau, a vast extent
of morasses. We have the evidence of geology for the former—for we see
that the original surface of the district consisted of thin layers of
limestone, alternating with layers of clay—and of tradition for the
latter.
We now come to the third, which is the historical, stage. By a series of
enormous dykes, some of them several miles in length, the enclosed space
having a breadth also of some miles, the inflowing water was confined to
certain portions of the upper plateau; perhaps the whole of the upper
plateau was by these means formed into a lake. The water thus retained
and secured, was amply sufficient for the perennial irrigation of the
whole of the descent reaching from the upper southern plateau down to
the Birket el Keiroon, and for a district to the west and south, and,
when the effects of the inundation began to be exhausted in the valley of
Egypt, for the contiguous departments of Memphis and Heracleopolis. In
this way the creation of the Faioum, the most fertile province in Egypt,
was far from being the whole of the benefit derived from these vast
waterworks.
The lake, or series of connected lakes, formed on the summit of the
plateau may have been twenty miles long, and two or three wide. This
was the famous Lake Mœris. The water was made to enter the lake by a
channel, which probably commenced at the modern Howarah, and was drawn
off for irrigation outside the Faioum by a channel which appears to have
passed out at Illahoun. In each of these a sluice was constructed. The
extreme costliness of opening and shutting these sluices shows that they
must have been enormous structures: but this was only in proportion to
the vast volume of water that passed through them. To fill such lakes
during the time of the high water of the inundation nothing less than a
considerable river would have sufficed. We can only think it very much to
the credit of these primæval engineers that they managed such sluices at
all. Nothing like either the slatts, or the locks, on some of our rivers
for holding back the water, would have answered their purpose. They
wisely made the channel for letting out the water quite distinct from
that for letting it in; for, if one of the sluices got out of order, then
the other might be used while the damages of the injured one were being
repaired. In a matter of life and death to so many it would not have
done at all to have had only one string to their bow.
But to revert to the gains of these vast hydraulic constructions. An
entirely new department had been added to Egypt. It was called the
Arsinoite, or Crocodilopolite nome, from Arsinöe or Crocodilopolis, its
capital; and turned out, from its more thorough exposure to air than
was possible in the valley of Egypt, the richest and most productive
part of the kingdom. Its produce was better and more varied. For the six
low-water months also during which the stored-up treasure of its great
lake flowed back into the valley, it maintained the irrigation of the
contiguous river-side departments. Some of the canals of India may have
done as much, but no work of man was ever grander in its conception,
more completely successful in all it aimed at achieving, or of greater
and more undoubted utility. It must have brought into being, and kept
in existence, more than 500,000 souls in the department it created, and
in those whose productiveness it increased; for we are speaking of land
which, we must remember, was not cultivated as our farms, or even as our
gardens are, and which produced never less than two crops a year; and
which not being inundated, as the land in the valley, but irrigated,
and warped, regularly, and at will, all the year round, was capable of
yielding three crops annually. Every square foot of ground in the Faioum,
all the conditions of warmth, fertility, and moisture being always
present, was kept working, at the highest power, through every hour of
the twelve months.
In Lake Mœris the crocodile abounded, having come in with the water. It
thus became to the inhabitants of the nome the symbol of the life-giving
water; and, having become to their minds the representative of that
upon which everything depended, as had been the case with other symbols,
it was held sacred, and eventually worshipped. Just so in the lower
departments outside, where they had once had too much water, and which
had not become inhabitable till the water had been drained, and dyked
off, and regulated, not the crocodile, but the ichneumon, the enemy of
the crocodile, had, by an analogous process, become an object of worship.
They had suffered from water, and could only with difficulty keep it
from overwhelming their lowlands; and so they made a symbol, for the
idea of regulating water that encroached and was destructive, of that
which was supposed to destroy what their neighbours had made a symbol
of water itself. Here was a symbol upon a symbol. But these were people
who thought in hieroglyphics; and to get to an understanding of what
they meant we must translate their hieroglyphical modes of thought and
expression into our own direct modes.
This lake so abounded in fish—more than twenty species were found in
it—that the daily take, during the six months the water was flowing out,
was sold for a talent of silver, about two hundred pounds of our money.
During the time the water was flowing in the average of the amounts of
the daily sales was the third of a talent. The king gave these proceeds
of the lake fisheries to the queen for pin-money. The quantity of fish
taken was so great that there was at times a difficulty in pickling and
drying it.
Herodotus describes Lake Mœris as 450 miles in circumference. These
figures are probably not those of an ignorant copyist, but what the
historian himself set down in his original manuscript, for he gives the
measurement in schœni as well as in stadia. The statement, of course, is
an impossibility, for the true Lake Mœris could not have been more than
twenty miles in length, or more than four in width. No one can suppose
that Herodotus is here drawing a long bow to astonish his countrymen
with a traveller’s tale. If he had been at all capable of doing anything
of this kind, he never could have written a book of such value as all
competent judges have ever assigned to his great work; and whatever he
might have written would soon have fallen into deserved contempt. It has
occurred to me that we may explain his figures by supposing that he meant
them to give the circumference of the whole water-system of the Faioum.
On the southern ridge of the mussel-shell he saw the great Lake Mœris;
along its northern side he saw what we distinguish by the name of Birket
el Keiroon; he saw the eastern extremities of the two connected by a
broad canal, and in like manner their western extremities; and throughout
the intervening descent he found a complete network of irrigating canals.
As he makes no separate mention of the Birket el Keiroon, the probability
is that he considered it to be a part of Lake Mœris. Regarding, then,
the two lakes as part of the same plan, and as equally the work of
man, and finding them so intimately connected with canals, he looked
upon the whole as one lake enclosing the cultivated Faioum, and so he
speaks of the whole under a single name, and gives a measurement of the
circumference of the whole as that of Lake Mœris. What he says of the
difficulty he had in understanding what had become of the earth raised
in excavating the lake would apply to Birket el Keiroon, supposing it
to have been artificially formed. This is almost a demonstration of his
having regarded it as a part of Lake Mœris. Of course there could have
been no difficulty of this kind with respect to the true Lake Mœris, for
that had not been formed at all by excavation, but by dykes: it was a
great dam, or series of dams, and the earth required for the construction
of the dykes was all the earth that had been moved. The difficulty,
therefore, here must have been just the very opposite to that which
occurred to Herodotus, because, before the water of the inundation had
deposited any or much mud in the district, the problem the engineer had
to solve was, where he was to get sufficient earth from to make the dykes.
Some travellers have spoken of the broad belt of shingly gravel on the
south side of Birket el Keiroon, as a phenomenon that needs explanation.
They ask—Where is the fertile soil that ought to be there? The answer, I
suppose, is—That it may be found precisely where it ought to be, that is,
at the bottom of the Birket el Keiroon. At times a great deal of water
has passed through the canals, as formerly from Lake Mœris itself, into
the Birket el Keiroon. This must have been very great on the occasion of
such a mishap as a break in the dykes, which doubtless occurred at times,
especially when things were going out of order. The beach, therefore,
of the Birket el Keiroon has been very variable, having often been very
considerably advanced. To whatever point the water rose, so far the wash
of the waves, breaking on the beach, would float off the light particles
of soil, and transport them to the quiet bottom of deep water. What there
would be a difficulty in explaining would be, not the absence of, but the
finding of Nile-mud soil in this belt that margins the Birket el Keiroon.
In some parts of the old bed of the now dry Lake Mœris we find deposits
of Nile-mud sixty feet thick. Again, this is what might have been
expected. The water of the inundation flowed into the lake heavily
charged with mud. The lake was still water. The sediment, therefore,
was speedily deposited at the bottom. This process was repeated every
year. Say that a film of the fourth of an inch was deposited each year
from Amenemha to Strabo, the whole of the sixty feet will be accounted
for. But this deposition of mud must also have been going on during the
antecedent unrecorded centuries of the morass-period.
This will also account for something more, that is, for the disuse and
obliteration of the lake. The mud had at last taken the place of the
water. The dykes had not been made of any great height at first, but, as
the soil rose both within and on the outside, they had, in the course of
two thousand years, been frequently raised correspondingly. Of course,
the bed of the Nile, like that of the Po, gradually rises, but the
amount of this rise is not great, and would bear but a small proportion
to the rise of the bottom of the lake. Lake Mœris, therefore, contained
in itself, as so many natural lakes have done, a suicidal element. What
made it a lake was destined to make it one day, what it has long been,
dry land. This was, from the first, only a question of time. Water could,
of course, again at this day be dammed up upon the site of the old lake,
but only by taking it from the river at a higher point than of old;
higher, that is to say, than the inlet of the Bahr Jusuf Canal at the old
Diospolis Parva; for instance, it might be necessary to take it now from
above the Cataract of Philæ, though, indeed, if that could be engineered,
we cannot suppose that it would pay, for the Faioum, including the bed of
the old lake, is pretty well irrigated now, though, of course, it has no
storage of water for the needs of the adjacent river-side lands.
It is obvious that we must connect with these vast and
scientifically-carried-out hydraulic works of the Faioum, the
registration of the height of the annual inundation Herodotus mentions,
and of which we have still existing evidence in the rock-cut records at
Semnéh, we referred to in our first chapter. He says this registration
was commenced in the time of Mœris. Now Mœris was that Amenemha III., who
constructed these great reservoirs of the Faioum, and after whom they
were ever afterwards called. The connexion between the yearly marking
of the height of the rising at Semnéh, in Nubia, and the reservoirs of
the Faioum might have been that the register at Semnéh was a detective
apparatus for showing how much water ought each year to have been brought
into the reservoirs; it would also indicate what was the need for
irrigation in the contiguous departments outside the Faioum; and thus be
a guide for the regulation of the amount of water that ought to be let
out each year.
In the waterworks of the Faioum there was a grand utility with which
our thought is more than satisfied: in the Labyrinth was seen the
architectural glory of the newly-created province; it was the greatest
construction of the old Monarchy: the Pyramids had been a rude
introduction to it; and it suggested to the younger monarchy the chief
structures of Karnak. If we could now behold it, as it stood at the time
when the Hyksos broke into Egypt to become its masters for between four
and five centuries, we should regard it as one of the most historically
interesting and instructive buildings ever erected in the world.
Its primary conception had been that of a place of assembly for the
Parliaments of old Egypt. At that time one court, to which were attached
250 chambers, half being above, and half below ground, appears to have
been assigned to each of the twenty-seven departments of the kingdom.
Each of these chambers was roofed with a single stone slab. No material
but stone had been used throughout the structure. Its pillars were
monoliths of red granite, and of a limestone so white as to have been
mistaken for Parian marble, and of so compact a texture as to receive a
good polish. The sculptures of the courts and chambers were singularly
bold and good. Those of each court, and its connected chambers, had
reference to the history, the peculiarities, and the religion of the
department to which it had been assigned. Besides the chambers were
numerous halls, porticoes, and passages. The area of the roof, composed
of the enormous slabs just mentioned, may have formed the actual place
of assembly for the collected deputies of the departments. On the north
side stood the Pyramid in which was buried Amenemha III., who, if he
had not originally designed the Labyrinth, had, at all events, been its
chief constructor, for his scutcheon is frequently found in the existing
remains. This Pyramid was cased with the white limestone used in the
Labyrinth itself. The dimensions of the figures sculptured upon it were
unusually large. This form having been incorporated into the general
design, for it was placed in front of the north, which was the open side,
must have gone some way towards breaking the monotony of the horizontal
and perpendicular lines of the Labyrinth itself.
Herodotus saw it after its partial restoration by the Dodecarchs. They
had restored twelve of its courts, one for each of themselves. Those
were days of decadence, when what would contribute to the greatness,
not of the kingdom, but of the individual ruler, was the governing idea
in royal minds. It had first fallen into decay, because into disuse,
during the long period of Hyksos occupation; and on the rise of the
new monarchy the place of assembly had been removed to Thebes, where
Sethos had constructed his grand hypostyle hall for that very purpose.
It had, therefore, at the time when the twelve kings took it in hand,
been disused and dilapidated for a period of between fifteen and twenty
centuries, probably for as long a time as has elapsed from the days of
Augustus to our own day. In that long period we can imagine to what an
extent it had been resorted to as a quarry for limestone, and building
materials. This will account for the restorations of the twelve kings
having been so considerable, that Herodotus speaks of them as having been
the builders of the structure he saw.
Above two thousand years more have since elapsed, the whole of which have
been years of neglect, and wilful dilapidation; and sad, indeed, is now
the state of the grand building, once the grandest in all the world, upon
which men had bestowed so much labour and thought, and of which those,
to whom it belonged, had been so proud. An Arab canal has been carried
through the centre of it. What remains is buried in the rubbish-heaps
formed by its own overthrow and destruction. Still, there must be much
within and beneath those heaps that might be disinterred. The whole
ought to be carefully and critically examined. It is evident that these
remains, from their extent and their connexion with the old monarchy, of
which the original structure was the chief and most historical monument,
are the most promising of all fields for Egyptological investigation.
CHAPTER XV.
HELIOPOLIS.
A sense of our connexion with the past vastly enlarges
our sympathies, and supplies additional worlds for their
exercise.—_Edinburgh Review._
In going to Heliopolis I turned out of the way a few steps to look at
the old sycamore many a pilgrim visits in the belief that Joseph and
Mary, and the young Child, during their flight into Egypt, rested in its
shade. There is no intimation that the Holy Family went beyond Pelusium,
or Bubastis. To have gone so far would satisfy the requirements of the
sacred narrative. As they were poor, probably they did not go far into
the land, except that it might have been in the exercise of Joseph’s
trade: though indeed I cannot imagine any one in Egypt, except a Jew,
employing a Jewish carpenter. Of course, of the Jews who went down into
Egypt there would be some who would be desirous of visiting Heliopolis,
the On of Genesis, which was very interestingly connected with Jewish
history; and, therefore, it is just possible the Holy Family may have
gone so far.
But as to this tree. If one of its kind could possibly have lived so
many centuries in Egypt, which is highly improbable, even under all the
circumstances most favourable for the supply of water and protection
from the wind, it would have required an oft-repeated miracle to have
saved it from the axe during the many long periods of disorder Egypt has
passed through since Joseph’s sojourn. The wood of a large tree is, in
Egypt, too tempting at such times to be long spared.
I do not know the date of the first mention of this tree, but I think two
hundred and fifty years would amply satisfy all the appearance of age
it presents. Pococke, from whom I may observe in passing, that a great
deal of the information, and many of the learned references contained in
several modern works on Egypt, have been borrowed without acknowledgment,
and in some cases taken verbatim, tells us that at the date of his visit,
which was in 1737, a tree, I conclude the one still standing, was shown
by the Copts as the one that afforded shelter to the Holy Family; but
that the Latins denied its genuineness, affirming that they had cut down
the true tree, that is to say, the one that had previously done duty
in supplying a visible object for the legend, and had carried it to
Jerusalem. This was probably false. Supposing it, however, to be true, it
was a discreditable act, such as you might have expected from such monks.
But we have arrived at the tree. It at once appears that the feelings
of some of the party are too deep for utterance. On these occasions
knowledge and reason have to fight, against something or other, a battle
that is lost often before it is begun. Belief is so much more natural and
pleasant than iconoclasm. If you would but let yourself alone—of course
you say nothing that would disillusion other people—their devout and
heart-contenting imaginations would be reflected in yourself. As it is,
you cannot help feeling the contagion. The upshot of the matter is, you
are not altogether satisfied with your own unbelief, nor at all benefited
by your half disposition to participate in the belief of your friends. As
to the believer, his emotions are every way pleasant and satisfactory to
himself.
But what took me to On was not to see the tree, but that I might stand
before the Obelisk of Osirtasen, the oldest obelisk in Egypt, which has
been pointing to the sky now for more than four thousand years—from the
days of the old monarchy, previous to the invasion of the Hyksos. To
them we may feel thankful for having allowed it to stand; and there was
no International in those days. It had been erected for some centuries,
when Abraham came down into Egypt. Joseph and Moses, who had both been
admitted to the Priest Caste, and were learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, stood before it, and read the inscription, word for word, as
the erudite Egyptologer reads it this day. Thales, Solon, Pythagoras,
and Plato all studied here. Heliopolis was then the most celebrated
university in the world for philosophy and science. Strabo was shown the
house in which Plato had resided. Herodotus found the priests here in
better repute for their learning than any elsewhere in Egypt. All these,
and a host of other well-known Greeks, Romans, and Jews resided and
studied here, during the many centuries of its renown. They all visited
again and again, and walked round and deciphered, or had deciphered to
them, the inscription on each side of this spit of granite. In those
days it seemed to them a wonderful monument of hoar antiquity—far beyond
anything that could be seen in their own countries. Everything they then
saw at Heliopolis has been reduced to mounds of rubbish now, excepting
this single stone. What a halo of interest invests it! Who would not
wish to see it? Who can be unmoved as he looks upon it? Fifty centuries
of history, and all the wisdom of Egypt are buried in the dust under
his feet. You shift your position, and then smile at yourself—a sort of
feeling had come upon you that you were obstructing the view of Joseph,
or of Herodotus; that you were standing in the way of Plato, or of Moses.
But though the carking tooth of time has in no way set its mark on the
monument of Osirtasen, a small fly has for the present obliterated, on
three sides of it, the record he placed upon them. It has done this by
filling up the incised hieroglyphics with its mud-cells. Whether it
be a mason-wasp, or a bee, I was unable to discover, the cells being
out of reach. I saw the same temporary eclipse of the sculptures and
hieroglyphics going on at Dendera and elsewhere. The venom of this little
insect is, I was told, equal to what I saw of its impudence.
The drive to Heliopolis is well worth taking on its own account. I
found by the wayside a greater variety of culture, and of plants, than
elsewhere in Egypt; oranges, lemons, ricinus, (which, with its spikes
of red flowers and broad leaves, is, here, a handsome plant,) cactuses,
vineyards, olive-trees, Australian eucalyptuses, and many other trees and
plants.
Before I went to Heliopolis I asked a Scotchman I found myself seated
next to at dinner one day at the _table d’hôte_, whether it was worth
one’s while to go? ‘I will tell you just how it is,’ he replied. ‘I have
been there. There is nothing to see; but it will give you a pleasant
afternoon. It is like going out a fishing. The day is fine. The country
looks well. You have a pleasant friend, and a good luncheon, with cigars
and whisky. You come home without having seen a fish; but you are not
dissatisfied with yourself for having gone.’ Having again met this
gentleman after I had been there, he asked me how I had liked Heliopolis?
He seemed so thoroughly satisfied with his own matter-of-fact, and very
intelligible, way of regarding the world, and all it contains, that I
refrained from telling him what I had thought. In his presence I almost
doubted whether any pearls, excepting his, were not counterfeits: at all
events, I was sure they would appear so to him. This, however, was but
a momentary misgiving. There are some other sorts which, though not so
common, are quite as genuine as his; perhaps, too, (but when one writes
in English this must not be said without expressions of humility, and of
readiness to receive correction,) they may have been formed by animals,
the ingredients of whose food were somewhat more varied than is the case
with the ordinary mollusk. But, be this as it may, those that are of
the rarer sort have the advantage that, while they do not in the least
interfere with the enjoyment of the sunshine, the pleasant scene, the
friend, the good cigar, and the old whisky (perhaps rather giving depth
to the enjoyment, because refining it), they are in themselves, and even
without these agreeable adjuncts, a source of never-failing enjoyment.
They are, as was said of such things long ago, as good for the night as
for the day. They go with us into the country, and accompany us on our
travels. It may, however, be objected to them that, in this country,
they generally make their possessor unpractical, and leave him poorer,
except in ideas, than they found him. There is no denying that it is so
here, very often. Is the reason of this that our governing class, whether
we interpret those words to mean the class from which our legislators,
and administrators, have hitherto very generally been taken, or the
class that put them in their places, that is, the shopocracy (can we
hope anything better from our new governing class, that of the British
artizan?) have cared but little for these things? Influences of this kind
have made us a money-worshipping people—not that we have loved money
more than other people, but that money has had too much power amongst
us—so that too many of us, like my Scotch acquaintance, have learnt to
pooh-pooh everything which does not fetch money—that is to say, nature
and history, which are the materials out of which truth is constructed;
and art, poetry, philosophy, and science, which are the construction
itself: everything but money, and what will bring money in the market.
And so, too, it came about that our highest education was merely a form
of classicism accommodated to a narrow and shortsighted theology: what
both nature and history might have taught would have been inconvenient,
or, be that as it may, was not needed.
We know that in certain exceptional cases (they ought not to be so very
exceptional) a man may possess the world that is to come, as well as the
world my Scotch acquaintance had so tight a grip of. This is a difficult
thing to do: on our system, and with our ideas, a very difficult thing;
still one that may be done. The difficulty, however, appears to be very
considerably increased, when the attempt is made to add to these two
the possession of the world that has been. It is hard to keep two balls
up in the air, and going, at the same time; but, to add a third, and
to attend to all three properly, to give each its own due space and
time, and to get them all to work harmoniously together, is a feat that
reveals a very un-English mind, but still it is the master-mind. What
were the performances of Egyptian Proteus to this? By turns he was
many things, but here is a man who, at one and the same time, has three
souls, and lives three lives. It is so, however, only in appearance: the
interpretation of the Parable is that the man has passed mentally out
of the flat-fish stage of being, in which sight is possible only in one
direction; and has reached the higher stage in which it is possible to
look in every direction; and so to connect all that is seen all around,
as that the different objects shall not reciprocally obscure, but
illumine each other.
CHAPTER XVI.
THEBES—LUXOR AND KARNAK.
For all Egyptian Thebes displays of wealth,
Whose palaces its greatest store contain:
That hundred-gated city that sends forth
Through every gate an hundred cars of war,
Well horsed, well manned.—HOMER’S _Iliad_.
Luxor, Karnak, and Thebes, are three fragments of the hundred-gated city
of Homer. The landing, to which you moor your boat, is about two hundred
yards from the great temple of Luxor. The open space, between the landing
and the temple, is a slight acclivity, and is completely covered with
sand. To the right and left of the open space are the mean buildings
of the modern town. Those on the right cluster round and conceal the
greater part of the temple, leaving only a grand colonnade visible from
the water, at the further side of the open sandy acclivity. As you enter
this colonnade, and stand in the roofed hall among the mighty pillars
that support the roof, a feeling comes over you that you have shrunk to
the dimensions and feebleness of a fly. The oldest sanctuary, of which
there are any remains still standing here, was built by Amenophis III.,
who belonged to the dynasty that expelled the Hyksos. It was now seen
that Thebes would be a safer capital than Memphis, which was too near
the Semitic border. The close connexion also that had now been formed
with Ethiopia, sometimes being that of its complete subjection, made
a more southern capital desirable. The erection of the splendid temple
of Amenophis indicates the complete triumph of the new policy. This
took place about four thousand years ago. Rameses the Great, the most
magnificent and prolific architect the world has ever seen, was not
satisfied with the original structure. Following the example of his
father, Sethos, he conceived a plan for investing Thebes with a grandeur
and a glory that none of the Empires, that have grown to greatness during
the thousands of years that have passed since his day, have done anything
to rival, or approach. And this plan he carried out to a successful
completion. Part of it was the architectural connexion of Luxor and
Karnak. For this purpose it was necessary to give additional height
and massiveness to Luxor. This he did by attaching to the extremity of
the temple of Amenophis, nearest to Karnak, a grand court, enriched
externally with colossal statues of himself and two obelisks; one of
which is now standing where he placed it; the other is in the _Place de
la Concorde_ at Paris. Having made the Temples of Luxor and Karnak, by
their height and massiveness, their lofty courts, propylæa and obelisks,
reciprocally conspicuous and imposing from each other, the direct
connexion was effected by a broad straight road, or street, nearly two
miles in length, guarded on either side by a row of sphinxes. Some of
these, at the Karnak end of the connecting street, still remain; they are
ram-headed. Fragments of others are found in the _débris_ nearer Luxor.
Along the line of this old street, which, however, except at its
northern end, is quite obliterated by rubbish mounds, cultivation, and
palm-groves, you ride to Karnak. As you pass no houses by the way the
distance seems great. Here was for many centuries the splendid centre
of the most splendid city in the world. On nothing like it did the sun
shine. The dwelling-houses, many of them Diodorus tells us four, some
even five, stories high, were, we may be sure, not allowed to approach so
near as to interfere with the solemnizing effect of the long dromos of
sphinxes. This effect was the very object of these avenues of sphinxes
and colossi, which were prefixed to the temples. They shut out the world
as the worshipper approached the temple, and prepared his mind for the
services and the influences of the house of God.
The area of the sacred enclosure at Karnak was a square of about 2,000
feet each way. The enclosing wall is still everywhere traceable. In
some parts it is but little injured by time. There were twenty-six
temples within the enclosure. It was a city of temples. The axis of the
main series points across the river to the gorge of the valley, in the
Libyan hills, at the head of which were placed the tombs of the kings.
Another series of temples reached down to the south-west entrance of the
enclosure, where was the termination of the Luxor-Karnak street. These
two series of temples may be roughly described as close and parallel to
the north-eastern and north-western sides of the enclosure. The rest of
the space was filled with more or less detached structures.
Here was, if not the sublimest—for the mass and simplicity of the Great
Pyramid may contest that—yet certainly the most magnificent architectural
effort ever made by man. What prompted it? At what did it aim? Of course
it was the embodiment of an idea, and that idea was, in its simplest
expression, the same as the idea contained in the Greek temple, and
the Christian cathedral. It was the glorification of the builders
conception of the Deity. The difference in the structures, in their
fashion and effect, arose out of the differences in the conceptions
these people had respectively formed of the Deity. In the conception of
the Egyptian awe was the predominant feature. Whatever else Deity might
be, awfulness was its first attribute. Beauty, if at all, came in a
comparatively low degree. With the Greeks and the Christians it was very
different. The gods of the Greeks were connected with and took delight in
Nature. The God of the Christians was the author of Nature. With them,
therefore, the recognition, the creation, and the exhibition of what
was beautiful, formed a part of the service of God. They felt that in
religion a sense of, and the sight of, the beautiful dispose to love. The
Egyptian beholder and worshipper was not to be attracted and charmed,
but overwhelmed. His own nothingness, and the terribleness of the power
and will of God, was what he was to feel. The soul of the Greek, and
of the Christian, was to be elevated, not crushed; to be calmed, to be
harmonized. One was the work of minds in which the instinct of freedom
was operative; the other of minds which felt the powerlessness, the
helplessness of man in the face of an unchangeable iron order alike of
Nature and of society.
Moreover, as we have already seen, in Egypt Nature herself did not
originate and nurture the thought of beauty. In Egypt were no rocky,
moss-margined streams, no hanging woods, no shady groves, no lovely
valleys. The two paramount objects in Nature, as they presented
themselves to the eye and the thought of the Egyptian, suggested to him
absolute power on the part of Nature, and absolute dependence on the
part of man. These two objects were a singularly dull and monotonous
river, but without which the Egyptian world would be a desert, and the
scorching sun, but without which all would be darkness and death. They
did everything. Without them everything was nothing.
These stupendous structures, then, expressed the feebleness of the
worshipper by magnifying the power of the object of his worship. They
awed him, as was intended, into a sense of personal nothingness, while
they called into being and fed a sense of irresistible power, external
to man, the idea of which the peculiarities of everything Egyptian gave
rise to. Moral ideas, engendered by the structure and working of Egyptian
society, and ideas of the physical forces which were ever before them,
and to which they felt their subjection, were entangled in their minds in
an inextricable knot, and that knot was their religion.
On the walls of these stupendous structures is written and sculptured
the history, as well as the religion, of Egypt, from Osirtasen I., who
reigned four thousand five hundred years ago, down to the Roman Augustus:
these are the earliest and the latest names inscribed on the lithotomes
of Karnak. The included space of time embraces the two last dynasties of
the primæval monarchy; the Hyksos period; the whole of the new monarchy,
when Egypt rose to its zenith of power, glory, art, wealth, and wisdom;
the domination of Persia; the Ptolemaic sovereignty; and a part of the
Roman rule. None inscribed so much history on these walls as the two
mightiest of Egyptian conquerors and builders, Sethos, and the stronger
son of a strong father, his successor, Rameses the Great. These two
Pharaohs themselves made more history than all who had gone before them;
and none who followed them attained to their eminence. The buildings they
erected are history, as much as their conquests.
The Coliseum is a part of Roman history. Its magnitude and its purpose
are history. It tells us that Cæsar could issue a decree that all the
world should be taxed; that Cæsar found it necessary to dazzle and amuse
the populace; that the amusements of the populace were brutal; that
amusement, not religion, was the order of the day. So in the stones
of Karnak we see the plunder and the tribute of Asia and Ethiopia.
Many a city had been made a desolate heap, and many a fair region had
been ravaged, and the silver and the gold collected, and the surviving
inhabitants swept into the Egyptian net, and carried away captive into
Egypt, to assist in building the grand hypostyle Court of Karnak,
the grandest hall ever constructed by man. In the direction of the
axis of the connected series of temples this hall is 170 ft. long.
Its width is 329 ft. It is supported by one hundred and thirty-four
columns. The central twelve are 62 ft. high in the shaft, and 36 ft.
in circumference. The remaining one hundred and twenty-two columns are
42 ft. in height, and 28 ft. in circumference. The lintel stone of the
great doorway is within 2 in. of 41 ft. in length. Every part of the
walls, the pillars, and the roof is covered with coloured sculptures
cut by the chisel of history, and of religion, which, however, as far
as we are concerned, belongs to history. The purpose of this hall was
to provide a fitting place for the great religious diets of the nation.
It must have appeared to the thoughts of those times that the gods had
assisted the king—who was already becoming their associate—in designing
and erecting such a structure. We, however, are aware that no people can
imagine, or undertake such structures, unless they are inspired with
the sentiment that they are the greatest among the nations, and at the
head of the world. Great things—it is more true of literature than of
architecture, but it is true of everything—are not done by imitation but
by inspiration, and nothing inspires great things but greatness itself.
To the north-west of this stupendous and overpowering hall is an
hypæthral court 100 ft. longer, and of the same width of 329 ft. A double
row of columns traverses its central avenue. It has corridors on each
side. It was left incomplete. This is plain from the enormous pyramidal
propylons, by which it is entered, never having been sculptured. None
who came after the Great Rameses were able to rise to the height of
his conceptions. In the unsculptured walls of these propylons are the
sockets, drilled, horizontally, through their whole thickness, for
holding the beams which supported the lofty staffs for the flags which
were used on great occasions. These lofty towers and these far-seen flags
connected the temples of Karnak with the temples on the western bank of
the river, and with the funeral processions to the catacombs of the kings
in the opposite valley of the Libyan range, just as the south-western
propylons, and the dromos of sphinxes, connected them with Luxor.
Though the name of Sesortosen, or Ositarsen I., is the first that appears
on this series of temples, it would be a mistake to suppose that the
date of the greatness of the city must be taken from his reign. This is
impossible, for he was the founder of the dynasty which came from Thebes.
Thebes, therefore, in his time—4,500 years ago—had become sufficiently
powerful to give a dynasty to Egypt. And when we look at its site, the
island in the river, the great extent of fertile land on the east bank,
with no inconsiderable extent also on the west, and the convenient
approach of the Libyan Hills to the river side, we see that this was a
spot designed by nature for one of the great cities of old Egypt. It
was great under the old monarchy, and gave to the country the two last
dynasties of that first monumentally-known period of its history. During
the succeeding 400 years of the Hyksos domination, a cloud of almost
impenetrable darkness settled down upon it, as upon everything else
Egyptian. It rose under, and with the new monarchy. The disadvantages of
the site of Memphis, and the conveniences of that of Thebes, had been
discovered. It, therefore, now became unreservedly the repository of
all the glories, and the chief shrine of the religion of the country.
The spoils of war, the tribute of subject nations, the rent of the
royal demesne, which comprised one-third of the land of Egypt, were
spent here. Next to the court came the numerous and wealthy body of the
priests; and they, too, were chiefly—though they had also other sources
of income—supported by the rents of their estates. Besides these there
was the official class, which again we know was numerous and wealthy.
Trade also must have largely contributed to the wealth of Thebes; for it
was the _emporium_ for the camel-borne produce of the interior of the
continent, and for the water-borne commerce with Egypt of the East Coast
of Africa, of Arabia, and of India. We may form an estimate of the extent
of this trade from the magnificence of the Temples, which, of old times,
in the East was generally proportionate to the amount and value of the
commerce carried on under their protection. From these sources the growth
and splendour of the new capital were fed for many centuries. We see from
the tombs that in its best days the wealthy were not afraid to use,
and to display, their wealth. The arts that embellish life, and which
had been inherited from the old monarchy, made great advances. Society
developed tastes and arrangements not altogether unlike those of our own
time.
At last the thunder-cloud, which had long been gathering in the
north-east, drifted down to Egypt, and the storm burst upon it. The
Persian had come. And the grand old ship went to pieces. In Asia the days
of Sethos and of Rameses had never been forgotten. The gods, that had in
their arks gone up with them to battle and to victory, were now defaced
and dishonoured. The temples which had been built by the captives, and
with the spoils brought out of Asia, were now sought for at Karnak,
and dilapidated. The ruthless work the Egyptians had done was repaid
ruthlessly. It was delightful to the soul of the Persian, now that his
opportunity had come, to job the iron into the soul of the Egyptian.
But such a civilization as that of old Egypt takes a great deal of
killing. It is the working of a thoroughly organized community in which
every man is born to his work, has natural instructors in his parents
and class, and so knows his work by a self-acting law of Society, which
possesses the regularity and precision of a law of Nature. It survived
the Persians. It Egyptianized the Greeks. It was not stamped out by the
Romans. Christianity gradually enfeebled, absorbed, and metamorphosed
it. At last came the Mahomedan flood, and swept away whatever germs
might have even then remained of a capacity for the maintenance of a
well-ordered and fruitful commonwealth.
CHAPTER XVII.
THEBES—THE NECROPOLIS.
Hæc omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est.
... Hi, quos vehit unda, sepulti.
Nec ripas datur horrendas, ac rauca fluenta
Transportare prius quam sedibus ossa quierunt.—VIRGIL.
Hitherto we have been on the eastern bank: we now pass to the western.
Here we find an historical museum, unequalled by anything of the kind to
be seen elsewhere, in variety of interest, and in completeness. Nothing
in the world, except the Pyramid region, approaches to it. There the old
primæval monarchy lies entombed; here, in the western quarter of the
capital of the younger monarchy, and which has now appropriated to itself
the name of Thebes, we have the catacombs of the kings, the tombs of the
queens, the tombs of the priests, of the official class, and of private
persons; the wonderful temple-palace of Medinet Haboo; the Memnonium, or
rather Rameseum, again, temple and palace; the old but well-preserved
Temple-palace of Cornéh, together with the remains of several temples;
the vocal Memnon, and its twin Colossus. These form a gallery of
historical objects, and of records of the arts, of the manners and
customs, and of the daily life of one of the grandest epochs of Egypt.
How can a few indications and touches convey to those who have not seen
them, any true or useful conception of the objects themselves, or of the
thoughts they give rise to in the mind of the traveller who stands before
them, and allows them to interpret to him the mind of those old times?
They are contemporary records in which he sees written, with accompanying
illustrations, chapter after chapter of old world history, anterior to
the days of Rome, Greece, and Israel.
The tomb of the great Sethos, Joseph’s Pharaoh, of his greater son,
Rameses II., and of Menophres, in whose reign the Exodus took place, are
all here. The tomb of Sethos reaches back 470 feet into the limestone
Mountain, with a descent of 180 feet. Coloured sculptures cover 320 feet
of the excavation. The exact point to which the sculptures had been
carried on the day of his death, is indicated by the unfinished condition
of the work in the last chamber. The walls had been prepared for the
chisel of the sculptor, but the death of the king interrupted the work.
The draughtsman had sketched upon them, in red colour, the designs that
were to be executed. His sketch had been revised by a superintendent of
such works, who had corrected the red outlines with black ink, wherever
they appeared to him out of proportion, or in any way defective. The
freedom and decision with which the outlines were drawn exceed probably
the power of any modern artist’s or designer’s hand. These sketches are
quite as fresh as they were the day they were made. You see them just as
they were outlined, and corrected for the sculptor, more than 3,000 years
ago. It would be worth while going to Egypt to see them, if they were the
only sight in Egypt.
In this, and several others among the royal tombs, we find symbolical
representations of the human race. The Egyptians, the people of the
North, of the East, and of the South, are indicated by typical figures.
This is meant to convey the idea that Pharaoh was virtually the
universal monarch. If he had not felt this, Karnak would never have been
built, nor, I will add, for the sake of the contrast, as well as the
concatenation, would a humble East Anglian Vicar have spent last winter
on the Nile.
The sculptures in these tombs may be divided under three heads. First,
there are those which describe events in the life of the occupant of the
tomb. Then there are scenes from common daily Egyptian life, in which he
took such interest as to desire to have representations of them in his
tomb. Lastly, there are scenes which illustrate what was supposed would
occur in the future life of the deceased.
In the tomb which bears the name of Rameses III., there are several
chambers right and left of the main gallery, in each of which is
represented, on the walls, some department of the royal establishment.
The king’s kitchen, the king’s boats, his armoury, his musical
instruments, the operations carried on upon his farms, the birds, and
the fruits of Egypt, and the sacred emblems; the three last symbolizing
fowling, gardening, and religion. It is possible that the king may have
buried here those of his household who presided over these departments;
each in the chamber designated for him by the representations, on the
walls, of what belonged to his office. If it were not so, of what use
were the chambers? they could hardly have been excavated merely to place
such pictures upon them.
As this Rameses III. was one of the warlike Pharaohs, and had, like
his great namesake, led successfully large armies into Asia, we cannot
suppose that he had these scenes of home-life sculptured and painted in
his tomb, either because he had nothing else to put there, or because
the subjects they referred to were more congenial to his tastes than the
pomp and circumstance of glorious war. He must, therefore, as far as we
can see, either have been acting under the motive just mentioned, which,
however, I cannot regard as a perfectly satisfactory suggestion; or he
must have been influenced by some thought of what he would require in the
intermediate state while lying in the tomb. Was there an idea that the
mummy would, for a time, take delight in contemplating those scenes and
objects, the fruition of which had contributed to its happiness during
the earthly life?
What we see in the tombs of the priests and officials almost leads us
to the conclusion that these representations had not, necessarily, a
direct and special reference to what had once been the occupations of the
inmates of the tomb, but were placed on the walls merely as pictures,
precisely as we hang upon the walls of our houses such pictures as please
us. There was nothing in the aspects of the country which could have
led the old Egyptians to wish to depict scenery. There were no charming
bits of Nature, no world of changeful cloud-scapes, no suggestive
winter, spring, or summer scenes. Nor, again, was the turn of their
minds dramatic, or such as might have led them to desire to reproduce in
pictures those human scenes which would recall the workings of passion
or the poetry of life; and, indeed, their style of art would hardly
have enabled them to deal with such subjects. They thus appear to have
been confined to hard literal matter of fact representations of the
arts of ordinary life, of Egyptian objects, of funeral processions, and
of what, according to their ideas, would take place in the next world.
With these they decorated their walls. It was Hobson’s choice. They had
nothing else for the purpose. They may have had a special inducement to
represent the common arts of life, such as cabinet-making, glass-blowing,
weaving, pottery, etc., because they took a very intelligible pride
in contemplating their superiority to the rest of the world in these
matters, which, at that time, when an acquaintance with them was regarded
as a distinction, were thought much more of than was the case afterwards,
when all the world had attained to proficiency in them.
That these kinds of representations were sometimes looked upon merely
as ornamental, or as such as any deceased Egyptian might contemplate,
while in the mummy state, with satisfaction, may be inferred from the
fact, that it eventually became a common practice for an Egyptian to
purchase, or to take possession of a tomb that had been sculptured and
painted for others, and even used by them, with the intention of having
it prepared for himself: though, probably, this would not have been
done in the early period of Egyptianism, when it was proud and pure. He
merely erased the name of the original occupant, and substituted for it
his own. He did not feel that there was anything to render the pictures
that had been designed by, and for, another, inappropriate to himself. We
know, too, that the pictures were often those of trades it was impossible
the deceased could have practised; still they were pictures of Egyptian
life it would be pleasing to contemplate. We had rather contemplate an
historical picture, a _tableau de genre_, or a landscape, but as they
had no idea of such things, and as civilization was then young, and the
simplest trade was regarded with pleasure for its utility, and as a proof
of what is called progress, everybody was at that time of day pleased
with its representation. Though we have entirely lost this feeling, I
believe uneducated people would still, at the present day prefer, because
it would be more intelligible to them, a picture representing the work
of some trade to a landscape, or historical piece. Of course the delight
an Egyptian felt in such representations did not in the least arise from
his being uneducated, but from a difference in his way of thinking and
feeling; and in a difference in what art could then achieve. In short,
these representations were meant either for the living, or for the dead.
In either case, to give pleasure, either to the beholder, or to the
supposed beholder, must have been their object.
The valley, which contains the tombs of which I have been speaking, was
devoted to the sepulture of the kings of the nineteenth and twentieth
dynasties. The greater part of them were found open, and had, in the
times of the Ptolemies, been already rifled. Their desecration, and the
injuries they received, ought probably to be attributed to the Persians.
I have already said something about the extent and the sculptures of the
catacomb of Sethos. The chamber, containing the sarcophagus of this great
Pharaoh, had been so carefully concealed, that it fortunately escaped
discovery down to our own time. Belzoni, in his investigation of this
tomb, finding that a spot which a happy inspiration led him to strike,
returned a hollow sound, had the trunk of a palm-tree brought into
the gallery, and using it as a ram, battered down the disguised wall.
This, at once revealed the chamber which, for more than four thousand
years, had escaped Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arab intrusion. In the
midst of this chamber stood the royal sarcophagus. This sarcophagus,
one of the most splendid monuments of Egypt in its best days, was of
the finest alabaster, covered with the most beautiful and instructive
sculptures. Who can adequately imagine the emotions of Belzoni at that
moment? It had been reserved for him to be the first to behold, to be
the discoverer, of what had escaped the keen search of so many races of
spoilers and destroyers, the finest monument of the greatest period of
Egyptian history. That monument is now in Sir John Soane’s Museum, in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
In the valley to the west of this are some of the tombs of the preceding,
the eighteenth, dynasty, that which drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. They
have, however, been so dilapidated that not much is to be learnt from
them.
Behind the great temple-palace of Medinet Haboo are the tombs of the
queens and princesses. These, too, have been much injured; and have, at
some period, subsequent to that of their original appropriation, been
used for the sepulture of private persons.
Along the foot of the hills, from the tombs of the queens to the entrance
of the Valley of the Kings, is one vast Necropolis for the priests, the
official class, and wealthy private individuals. All these fall within
the New Empire. Among them, however, are found some instances of royal
interments, but they belong to the Old Empire. When we talk of the New
Empire we must not forget its date: its palmiest days belong to the time
of the Exodus and of Abraham’s visit to Egypt.
As I rode through this city of the dead, visiting the tombs which
possessed the greatest interest, I endeavoured, as I had done in the
Necropolis of the Pyramids, to recall its pristine state; to see it as
it was seen by those who constructed and peopled it. The tombs were then
everywhere along the _Háger_, that is, on the first rise or stage of
the desert, above the cultivated land. Here, as generally throughout
Egypt, vegetable life, and the soil which supports it, do not extend one
inch beyond the height of the inundation, which brings the soil as well
as the water. The stony desert, and the plant-clothed plain touch with
sharp definition, each maintaining its own character to the last, just
as the land and sea do along the beach. From this line of contact to the
precipitous rise of the hills there is a belt of irregular ground. In
some places this belt is a rocky level or incline, in others it is broken
into rocky valleys, but always above the cultivated plain. The whole of
it is thoroughly desert, and all of it ascends towards the contiguous
range. It is everywhere limestone, and generally covered with _débris_
from the excavations, and from the hill-side. Such is the site of this
great Necropolis.
In the days when Thebes was the capital, the whole of this space was
covered with the entrances to the tombs. Some of these entrances were
actual temples. Some resembled the propylons of temples. Some were
gateways, less massive and lofty, but still conspicuous objects. In every
tomb were its mummied inmates. They were surrounded by representations
in stone, and colour, of the objects and scenes they had delighted in
during life. Their property, their pursuits, what they had thought and
felt, what they had taken an interest in, and what they had believed,
were all around them. Objects of Nature, objects of art, objects of
thought, had each assumed its form in stone. Each was there for the
mummy to contemplate. These were true houses for the dead. Houses built,
decorated, and furnished for the dead. In which, however, the dead were
not dead; but were living in the mummied state. We have rock-tombs
elsewhere; but where, out of Egypt, could we find another such city?
It is a city excavated in the rocky plain, and in the mountain valleys.
It consists of thousands of apartments, spacious halls, long galleries,
steps ascending and descending, and chambers innumerable. It is more
extensive, more costly, more decorated, than many a famous city on which
the sun shines. It is peopled everywhere with its own inhabitants; but
among them is no fear, or hope—no love or hatred—no pleasure or pain—no
heart is beating—no brain is busy.
As we wander about these mansions of the dead we feel as Zobeide did when
she found herself in the spell-bound city. The inhabitants are present.
Everything they used in life is present. Life itself only is wanting.
Everything has become stone.
The largest of the tombs now accessible is that of Petamenap, a Royal
Scribe. It is entered by a sunken court, 103 feet in length by 76. This
was once surrounded by a wall, in which was a lofty gateway, the two
sides of which are still standing. This court leads to a large hall,
which is the commencement of a long series of galleries, apartments,
and side chambers—all excavated in the solid rock. Omitting the side
chambers, and measuring only the galleries and apartments they passed
through, the excavations of this single tomb extend to a length of 862
feet. The area excavated amounts to nearly 24,000 square feet, or an acre
and a quarter. These are Sir Gardiner Wilkinson’s measurements, which
have been accepted by Lepsius, who also himself carefully inspected the
tomb. The whole of the wall-space gained by these excavations, which are
actually more than one-third of a mile in length, is covered throughout
with most carefully-executed sculptures, in the most elaborate style
of Egyptian art. It is worth noticing that this tomb of a private
individual exceeds in dimensions, costliness, and magnificence all the
royal tombs—of course, excepting the Great Pyramids—with which we are
acquainted.
We may infer, from the costliness of these tombs, and from the length of
time it must have taken to excavate and adorn them, that the Egypt of
the time to which they belong, was a wisely-ordered kingdom, in which,
to a very considerable extent, not the arbitrary caprice of kings and
governors, but law was supreme. At that time the scene of such a history
as that of Naboth could not have been in Egypt. It must for long ages
have been, in the very important matter of a man’s doing what he pleased
with his own, in a very unoriental condition. This tomb of Petamenap,
and thousands of others, more or less like it, could only have been
constructed where, and when, subjects may acquire great wealth, and
display it with safety.
We may also infer, from the size of the city under the new monarchy, and
the wealth of its inhabitants, from their mode of living, their tastes
and pursuits, and from the state of the arts which ministered to the
convenience and adornment of their lives—upon all of which points this
Necropolis gives inexhaustible, and absolutely truthful evidence; that
a great part of the wealth of Thebes was drawn from precisely the same
source as that of Belgravia—that is, from the rent of the land.
An abundance of minor matters, but full of historical interest and
instruction, may be gleaned from the same source. We find, for instance,
that 3,350 years ago the principle and the use of the arch were familiar
to the Egyptians; for there are several arches of that date in the tombs.
Glass-blowing was practised. The syphon was understood, and used. In
their entertainments the presence of both sexes was usual; and perfumes
and flowers were on these occasions regarded as indispensable. The
shadoof, the simplest and most effective application of a small amount of
power to produce a considerable result, was as universally at work on the
banks of the river, and of the canals, as at the present day; indeed, we
cannot doubt but that it was much more so. But it is unnecessary to add
here to these particulars.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THEBES—THE TEMPLE-PALACES.
Cur invidendis postibus, et novo
Sublime ritu moliar atrium?—HORACE.
We will now, having left the tombs, turn our attention to the temples.
Some we find upon the edge of the _Háger_, others a little way back upon
it. The greater number of those that were once here have been completely
razed to the ground, nothing now remaining of them except fragments of
statues, the foundations of walls, and the bases of pillars; all of
which are buried in rubbish heaps. There are, however, some singularly
interesting exceptions which demand particular notice. Fortunately,
though it hardly looks like chance, the temple-palaces of Sethos, of the
great Rameses, and of Rameses III., are still standing. These were built
by the two great conquerors of the nineteenth, and the great conqueror
of the twentieth dynasties. Why did not other Pharaohs erect similar
structures? The reason is not far to seek. It is here present in the
case of these three kings, and is absent from the cases of other kings.
The funds necessary for such structures had to be procured by looting
Asia, and a great part of the work had to be done by captives taken in
war. And we know that at this time it was the custom for those kings of
Egypt, who contemplated great works, to begin their reigns with raids
into Asia, for the express purpose of collecting the gold and the slaves
that would enable them to carry out their designs. It was the good old
rule, the simple plan, that those should take who had the power. These
great and famous expeditions, in truth, were only imperial slave hunts,
and imperial brigandage, in which not petty tribes of African negroes,
but the (for those times) civilized nations of Asia, and not a few
travellers, but the inhabitants of great cities and kingdoms, were the
victims. These great builders, administrators, and soldiers, who believed
of themselves that they had already been received into the hierarchy of
heaven, could not have understood in what sense they could have done ill
in building themselves a wide house, and large chambers, and ceiling it
with cedar, and painting it with vermilion; though they doubtless would
have thought that it would have been ill, even for an Egyptian Pharaoh,
to build his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong, to use
his neighbour’s service without wages, and to give him not for his work.
But how any question of unrighteousness and wrong could arise between
Pharaoh and strangers, people who were not Egyptians, would have been
something new and incomprehensible to Pharaoh. I once asked a fisherman’s
boy who was unconcernedly breaking up a basketful of live crabs to bait
his father’s dab-nets, if it was not cruel work that he was about? ‘No,’
he replied, ‘because it is their business to find us a living.’ Somewhat
in the same way did Pharaoh think of the outside world; and in much
the same way, too, did he treat it, when he wished to build himself a
temple-palace. In these temple-palaces one hears the groans, and sees the
blood, of those who were broken up alive to build them.
There are no buildings in the old world so full of actually written
and pictured history as these three temple-palaces, for each of them
contains records of the achievements and life of the builder, as they
were regarded by himself, and of his religion, as it was understood by
himself. The grandest of the three is the Memnonium, or, as it ought
to be called, the Rameseum. Here lived the great Rameses. He designed
it, built it, and made it his home. He built it after his great Asiatic
campaigns. How often here must he have fought his battles o’er again.
The Rameseum bears the same relation to all the other buildings of
old Egypt that the Parthenon does to all the other remains of Greek
architecture. It was built at the culminating point of Egyptian art
and greatness. The conception was an inspiration of a consciousness of
excellence and power. Everything here is grand, even for Egypt; the
lofty propylons, the Osirid court, the great halls, and, above all, the
colossal statue of the king seated on his throne, a monolith of red
granite, weighing nearly 900 tons, and which is now lying on the ground
in stupendous fragments, its overthrow having been probably the work of
the vengeful Persians. Nothing can exceed the interest of this grand
structure. It included even a spacious library, on the walls of which
were sculptured figures of the god of letters, and of the god of memory.
Over the door by which it was entered was the famous inscription, ‘The
medicine of the mind.’ And this more than three thousand years ago: and
yet we may be sure that it did not contain the first collection of books
that had been made in Egypt, but only the first of which we have any
record. We know that they had been keeping a regular register of the
annual rising of the Nile then for nearly a thousand years, and that
their written law ante-dated this library by between two and three
thousand years. Both of these facts, to some degree, indicate collections
of books. By a concurrence of happy chances, which almost make one
regret that a grateful offering can no longer be made to good fortune,
papyrus-rolls have been found dated from this library, and in the Háger
behind have been discovered the tombs of some of the Royal librarians.
The temple-palace, at Cornéh, of Sethos, the father of Rameses, though
built with all the solidity of Egyptian architecture in its best days, is
a very much smaller structure than the Rameseum. What remains of it is
in very good preservation. It stands about a mile to the north-west of
the latter building, some little way back in the Háger, and on somewhat
higher ground, near the entrance of the Valley of the Kings. On one of
the sphinxes belonging to it are inscribed the names of all the towns
in the Delta Sethos conquered. This is an important record, as it shows
either that the Semites had been able to some extent to re-establish
themselves in the Delta, or that they had never been thoroughly
subjugated, in that part of the country, before the time of Sethos. The
work, however, was now done thoroughly, for from this time we do not hear
of any troubles that can be assigned to them. The sculptures on the walls
of this palace are in the freest and boldest style. They relate chiefly
to religious acts and ceremonies. As Sethos was the designer and builder
of the chief part of the stupendous hypostyle Hall of Karnak, it was not
because his architectural ideas were less grand than those of his son
that his palace was so much smaller. I can imagine that the reason of
this was that he was desirous that none of his attention and resources
should be diverted from his great work, which was enough of itself to tax
to their utmost all the powers both of the king and of the kingdom. It
raises him in our estimation to find that his greatest work was not his
own palace, but the hall in which the ecclesiastical diets of Egypt (of
course the members were priests) were to be held; for though he was a
Pharaoh, and a conquering Pharaoh too, he could see that the kingdom was
greater than the king, and that to do great things well one thing must be
done at a time.
A little to the south of the Rameseum is the third of these
temple-places. It is that of the third Rameses. This, though not so grand
and pure in style as the Rameseum, has been better preserved. Upon it,
and within it, are the ruins of a Coptic town. The crude brick tenements
perched on the roof, and adhering to the walls of the mighty structure,
reminded me of the disfigurements of the obelisk of Heliopolis, and of
the propylons of Dendera, by the mud-cells which insect architecture had
plastered over them. So wags the world. Squalid poverty had succeeded to
imperial splendour. But the same fate had waited upon both. The towers
of kings, and the hovels of the poor, are now equally desolate and
untenanted. One of the courts of the palace had been metamorphosed by
the Copts of the neighbourhood into their church. From the expense which
must have been incurred in effecting this transformation it is evident
that they once formed here a numerous body. The community, however, has
entirely disappeared from this place, and nothing—absolutely nothing—has
come in its stead. They say in the East that where the Turk sets his foot
grass will not grow; but this is true of El Islam generally. It is great
at pulling down and destroying, but not equally great at reconstructing.
The Christian church and the Egyptian temple are alike deserted. The old
Egyptian and the Coptic Christian have both completely vanished from
this scene. It is curious as we stand here, with equal evidence before us
of the equal fate of both, to observe how little people think about the
fate of the latter in comparison with what they think about the fate of
the former; and yet there are, at all events, some reasons to dispose us
favourably, and sympathizingly, towards our Coptic co-religionists. If
the causes of the feeling could be analyzed, would it be found to have
arisen from a half-formed thought that there was no gratitude to be felt
to the poor Copt for anything he had done, and that the world had no
hope of anything from him? Or would it be because there is really little
to interest the thought in the fortunes of a community, of which we
know little more than that, by having changed the law of liberty into a
petrified doctrine, they had gone a long way towards committing moral and
intellectual suicide?
In one of the private apartments of this temple-palace of Rameses III.
the sculptures represent the king seated on a chair, which would not
be out of place at Windsor, or Schönbrunn. His daughters are standing
around him, offering him fruit and flowers, and agitating the air with
their fans. He amuses himself with a game of drafts, and with their
conversation.
Somewhat in advance of these temple-palaces of the two Rameses, stand on
the cultivated plain the two great colossi of Thebes. The space between
them is sufficient for a road or street. The easternmost of the pair
is the celebrated vocal Memnon of antiquity. It is covered with Roman
inscriptions placed upon it by travellers, who were desirous of leaving
behind them a record of the fact, that they had not been disappointed
in hearing the sound. That was an age when the love of the marvellous,
combined with ignorance of what nature could, and could not, do,
prepared, and predisposed men, for being deceived. There can be no doubt
how the sound was produced. There is in the lap of the seated figure an
excavation in which a priest was concealed, who, when the moment had
arrived, struck a stone in the figure, of a kind which rang like brass.
The Arabs now climb into the lap in a few seconds, and will for a piastre
produce the sound for you at any hour of the twenty-four you please. The
Emperor Hadrian heard three emissions of the sound on the morning he went
to listen. This is a compliment we are not surprised to find the statue
paid to the ruler of the world.
This colossus was erected by Amunoph III., a name which, by an easy
corruption, the Greeks transformed into Memnon, just as they changed
Chufu into Cheops, Amenemha into Mœris, and Sethos into Sesostris.
Behind these colossi stood a temple which had been erected by the same
Amunoph. Nothing now remains of this temple but its rubbish heap, and its
foundations. It was, however, once connected, architecturally, with the
temple he had built at Luxor, on the other side of the river. The street
that connected them was called Street Royal. This was the line Sethos,
and the two Rameses, must always have taken, in going from their palaces
on the western bank to Luxor and Karnak on the eastern side. It must have
been about three miles in length. The line of this Royal Street is marked
by the two still standing colossi. The fragments of a few others have
been found. Those that remain are sixty feet in height. This must have
been a grand street, with the two temples at its two ends, and part of
it, at all events, consisting of a dromos of such figures.
I have already mentioned that a sphinx-guarded street, about two miles
long, ran from Luxor to Karnak. I have also pointed out that the
north-west angle of the great enclosure of Karnak was connected, to the
eye, with the temples of the western Háger. The precise spot upon the
Háger where a temple had been made conspicuous to the eye from Karnak,
was what is now called Assassef. Of course from Assassef the lofty
structures of Karnak were in full view. In order to place the temple at
Assassef reciprocally in view to the spectator standing at Karnak, it
was necessary to remove a part of the natural rock wall of the eastern
side of the valley of Assassef, and this had been done. The distance
from Karnak to Assassef is somewhat over three miles. From this point
temples and temple-palaces were continuous along the edge of the Háger,
in front of the Necropolis, as far as the western extremity of the Royal
Street. Thus was completed the grand Theban Parallelogram. The circuit of
the four sides measured, I suppose, about ten miles. It included every
one of the great structures of Luxor, Karnak, and Thebes. There can be
no doubt but that the lofty propylæa, and obelisks of Luxor and Karnak
were intended to be seen from a distance. As the site of Thebes was, of
itself, somewhat elevated above the sites of Luxor and Karnak, there was
no occasion for obelisks at Thebes; as also they would have been backed
by the mountains to one looking from the other side of the river, they
would have been inconspicuous, and therefore this architectural form was
not used at Thebes: though, indeed, I believe no instance remains to show
that it was ever used on that side of the valley, on which the sun set.
The structural connexion of all the mighty, magnificent buildings
throughout these ten miles was the grand conception of Rameses the Great,
of which I spoke some way back. There never were, we may be quite sure,
ten such miles, elsewhere, on the surface of this earth. It is rash to
prophesy, but we may doubt whether there ever will be ten such miles
again. We may, I think, say there will not be, unless time give birth
to two conditions. The first of the two is, that communities should
become animated with the desire to do for themselves what these mighty
Pharaohs did for themselves in the old days of their greatness; and as
man is much the same now that he was then, and as private persons are
capable of entertaining the same ideas as kings, there is no _à priori_
reason against the possibility of this. The second condition is, that
machinery should eventually give us the power of cutting and moving large
blocks of stone at a far cheaper rate than is possible, with that already
mighty assistant, at present. For, as the world does not go back, we may
be sure that myriads of captives, and of helpless subjects, will never
again be employed in this way. It is quite conceivable that the mass of
some community may come to feel itself great, the feeling being in the
community generally, and not only in the individual at its head; and
should they at the same time entertain the desire that the magnificence
of their architecture should be in proportion to, and express, the
greatness of their ideas and sentiments, then the world may again see
hypostyle halls as grand as that of Karnak, and magnificence equal to
that of the Osirid Court of the Rameseum: with, however, the difference
that they will be constructed by, and for, the community. In this there
would be no injury in any way to any one, and there would be nothing to
regret, for those who had raised such structures, and were in the habit
of using them, would perhaps on that account be less likely to be mean,
and little, in the ordinary occurrences of life. At all events there
would be nothing demoralizing in making machinery the slave to do the
heavy drudgery required in their construction.
* * * * *
There is one source of interest which belongs to the study of the
antiquities of Egypt in a higher degree than to the study of the
antiquities of any other country. Every object on which the eye may
rest, whether great or small, from the grandest architectural monument
down to a glass bead, is thoroughly, and genuinely Egyptian. Not a tool
with which the compact limestone, or intractable granite was cut; not a
colour with which the sculptures or walls were decorated; not a form in
their architectural details; not a thought, or practice, or scene the
sculptures and paintings represent, was, as far as we know, borrowed, or
could have been borrowed, from any neighbouring people. The grand whole,
and the minutest detail, everything seen, and everything implied, was
strictly autochthonous; as completely the product of the Egyptian mind,
as Egypt itself is of the Nile.
CHAPTER XIX.
RAMESES THE GREAT GOES FORTH FROM EGYPT.
Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.—SHAKSPEARE.
Rameses the Great was the Alexander of Egypt. His lot was cast in the
palmiest days of Egyptian history. He was the most magnificent of the
Pharaohs. None had such grand ideas, or gave them such grand embodiment.
He carried the arms of Egypt to the utmost limits they ever reached.
As one stands at Karnak, Thebes, and Abydos, before the sculptures he
set up, and reads in them the records of his achievements, and of the
thoughts that stirred within him, the mind is transported to a very
distant past—but though so distant, we still may, by the aids we now
possess, recover much of its form and features. Let us then endeavour to
construct for ourselves some conception of his great expedition from the
materials with which the monuments and history supply us.
Egypt is very flourishing. Pharaoh has an army of 700,000 men and great
resources, and so he becomes dissatisfied at remaining idle in his happy
valley. There is a wonderful world up in the north-east. He would like
to be to that world what we might describe as an Egyptian Columbus and
Cortez in one. He wishes to signalize the commencement of his reign with
some achievement that will be for ever famous. But these distant people
have never wronged him: they had never burnt his cities, or driven off
his cattle. If they have ever heard of the grandeur of Egypt, they can
hardly tell whether it belongs to this world of theirs, or to some other
world. Considerations, however, of this kind do not affect him.
But there are many difficulties in his way. The very first step of the
proposed expedition will carry his army into a desert of some days’
journey. How is this desert to be crossed? That is disposed of by the
answer that his father Sethos, and even some of the predecessors of
Sethos on the throne of Egypt, had crossed it.—But how is his army to
be supported in that unknown world beyond? How are provisions to be
procured, for they cannot be supplied from Egypt? The people they will
invade can support themselves; what they have must be taken from them,
and war must be made to support itself.—But supposing all goes well as
they advance, how shall they ever get back, with their arms worn out,
and their ranks thinned, and with a vengeful foe barring their return
with fortified places, and swarming upon them from every side? They must,
on their outward march, raze all these fortified places, and make as
clean a sweep as they can of the population of the countries they pass
through.—And how shall the Egyptians live when Nature shall assail them
with frost and snow? Will their linen robes be then sufficient? They
must do what they can. They will be able to take the woollen garments
of the enemies they destroy. The difficulties, then, could not deter
him. He must see this great and wonderful world outside. He must flaunt
his greatness in its face. He must collect the treasures and the slaves
that will be required for building the mighty temples and palaces he
contemplates. These monuments he must have; and he will record upon them
that he did not, in raising them, tax and use up Egyptians.
And so it becomes a settled thing that he and his armies shall go forth
from Egypt. It would not have been the East had not the host, with which
he was to go forth, been a mighty one—as God’s army, the locusts, for
multitude. Everything must be on a grand scale; and everything must be
foreseen and provided for, as is the custom of the wise Egyptians.
Then began a gathering of men, of horses, of chariots, of asses, such
as had never been seen on the earth before—as much greater than other
gatherings as the Pyramids were greater than other buildings. In those
mighty structures they had had an example, now for a thousand years,
of the style and fashion in which should be carried out whatever Egypt
undertook. Day and night were the messengers going to and fro on the
bank, and on the river. Many new forges were put in blast, many new
anvils set up. Never had the sound of the hammer been so much heard
before, never had been seen before so many buyers and lookers-on in the
armourers’ bazaars. There were canvas towns outside the gates of Thebes,
of This, of Memphis, and of other great cities. Never had so many horses
been seen picketed before; men wondered where they all had come from.
On the river there were boats full of men, and boats full of grain, to
people and to feed the canvas towns. Never had the landing-places been so
crowded before. Many a river trader, in those days, had to drop away from
his moorings against the bank, to make room for the grain-boats and the
troop-boats of the great king. Never had the temples been so full before:
never had there been so many processions, and so many offerings. The gods
must be propitiated for the great expedition: it must be undertaken
in their names. Mightier temples and richer offerings must be promised
for the return of the king and of the host, when they shall bring back
victory. Many said in those days of preparation, ‘The gods be with the
king and with his armies.’ Many said in their hearts, ‘Who can tell? The
gods had made Egypt great, but would they go forth from Egypt? The king
was as a god, but could he do all things?’ This was an issue that could
not be forecast.
Such was the talk of many in the mud-built villages, as well as in
hundred-gated Thebes, in old Abydos, in discrowned Memphis, and in all
the cities of all the gods—for every god had his own city. Nothing else
had much interest, either in the mansions of the rich, or in the hovels
of the poor. The wives and daughters of the people—while in the evening
they walked down to the river-side with their water-jars, or, when
the sun was down, clustered together at the street-corners and at the
village-gate, sitting on the ground—had never tarried before so long at
those watering-places, those gates, and those street-corners. And all
the while the musterings and the preparations went on like the work of a
machine, for the king had the whole people well in hand, and he bent all
Egypt to the work as if it had been one man.
And everything is now complete. The last processions and offerings have
been made. The aid of the gods has been promised. The priests had thought
that Egypt, at all events, would be secure, whatever might befall those
going forth; that no abiding evil consequences could ever ensue to the
country itself. In this they knew not the future. If all should not go
well, Egypt, they deemed, could spare some of her soldier caste, and that
her priests would in that take no hurt. As to the stranger, no matter
what his thirst for vengeance, it never would be slaked in Egypt.
And now the host has reached Pelusium, the place which, under the name
of Abaris, had been fortified so strongly on the expulsion of the
Hyksos. This was the great rendezvous. In that neighbourhood the several
army-corps had been assembling for the last two or three months. And now
it is near the end of winter. Water will still be found in the wadies
of Mount Cassius; and they will be in time to reap for themselves the
harvests of Syria; and, as the season goes on, of the countries further
to the north. At last they advance into the desert, and the host is
brought together for the first time. Never before had been seen such
a host. All the might and all the glory of Egypt are there; all the
discipline and all the forethought. These Egyptians, who are so fond
of colour and of flags at home, have not gone forth to show themselves
to the world without this bravery. The desert cannot be seen for the
myriads of men and animals that cover it. It has become as gay as a
flower-garden. The bright sun is glinting from untarnished arms.
And so they crossed the desert, and got among the cities which were
afterwards known as the cities of the Philistines, the cities of the
Plain of Sharon. And now commenced their cruel work. Their two great
objects were to provide themselves with supplies; and then to sweep away
everything, both fortified places, and men capable of bearing arms, that
might impede their return, they knew not when, or how. These people had
never troubled Egypt, but most of them were akin to the hated Hyksos. No
justification was needed, but that would justify anything. The Egyptian
host must take all it wanted, though those from whom they take it
perish; and they must leave neither foe, nor pretended friend, behind.
And so they went on, clearing off everything, man and beast, fenced city
and corn-field. It was done ruthlessly. Their swords and spears were
seldom dry. You see on the sculptures the king set up when he returned
home, how he treated the people whose countries he passed through, for
this was not an expedition against enemies, but against the tribes and
nations whose countries he chose to pass through and desolate.
And so they went on. They swept over the Plain of Esdraelon, and they
passed up by Lebanon and Damascus into Armenia. They then overran Persia
and Media. At last they reached Bactria, the district of which modern
Bokhara is now the capital. Here they effected a lodgment, which kept
this region in subjection and tributary to them for some generations. It
is curious that in this remote and almost inaccessible centre of Asia
the Greeks also in after times succeeded in establishing themselves, and
were able to maintain the position they had acquired in it for several
centuries. This was the Egyptians’ extremest point to the East. They
now turned their faces westward, and, having overrun Asia Minor, they
crossed into Thrace. From Thrace they appear to have endeavoured to
make the circuit of the Euxine. This brought them into collision with
the Scythians, whom they defeated. Among those peoples whose cities he
destroyed, and whose country he ravaged, Rameses had probably taken no
especial notice of the Persians. They, however, were the people who
were destined to retaliate the wanton and enormous cruelties of the
undertaking, in the success of which he saw only the establishment of the
glory and power of Egypt. In the days of their empire they will not only
repay Egypt for this expedition, but they will also follow the footsteps
of Rameses through Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus into Thrace, and
through Thrace, and across the Danube, into Scythia. But from the wide
inhospitable steppes they will not bring back the barren victories—no
others could be obtained there—which will enable the Egyptians to boast
that the achievements of Darius had not equalled those of Rameses.
At the eastern end of the Black Sea, in the district known to the
Greeks by the name of Colchis, Rameses left a detachment of his army
for the purpose of permanently occupying a position. Those thus left
behind established themselves on the spot; and long afterwards, by their
practice of the rite of circumcision, their language, complexion, and
hair, retained the evidence of their origin. As their hair was woolly
and their skin black, they must have been detached from the Ethiopian
contingent of the army.[4]
Everywhere throughout this great raid Rameses set up statues and tablets
with inscriptions upon them to commemorate his achievements, making many
of them insulting to the people he had conquered, and whose countries
he had devastated. One of these inscriptions remains to this day on the
living rock to the north-west of Damascus, near the mouth of the river
the Greeks called Lycus, and which is now known by the name of El Kelb.
Upon it are still legible the names of Rameses and of the gods Ra (the
sun), and Ammon, whom especially he served, as the gods of his great
capital, Thebes.
And so, after nine years of such warfare as we have been describing, he
returns to favoured and protected Egypt, to thank Ra and Ammon for the
favour and protection they had vouchsafed to him, and for all the mighty
deeds they had enabled him to do, and to preserve for ever the memory of
those deeds on the walls of their temples. He brings back with him much
treasure, the spoils of the nations, and multitudes of captives. Both
this treasure and these captives he uses up upon the temples, and upon
the monuments, palaces, and cities, he now builds.
Without any possible provocation, and without any advantage to himself,
if the wear and tear of his own kingdom be weighed in the balance against
the spoil and the slaves he brought home, he had, like a lava torrent,
passed over what were then some of the fairest portions of the world.
His swarthy, bloodthirsty, destroying host must have appeared to the
inhabitants of those countries like the legions of the lower world let
loose. This was too dreadful a work even for those times ever to be
forgotten.
And it was remembered some centuries afterwards, when the tables were
turned, and Egypt was invaded by Cambyses. In the Persian army were
contingents from many people who had treasured up the memory of what
Rameses the Great had on this expedition done to their forefathers, and
of what several of the successors of Rameses on the throne of Egypt had
in like manner done to many of the peoples of Asia. The day of reckoning
came, and the reckoning was fearfully exacted. We see the marks,
remaining on the temples to this day, of the retributive fury of the
Persians against the gods of Egypt.
CHAPTER XX.
GERMANICUS AT THEBES.
Tanquam tabula naufragii.—BACON.
While I was at Thebes the account often recurred to me which Tacitus
gives of the visit of Germanicus to the monuments of that city. He was,
being then about thirty years of age, the most accomplished and popular
prince the family of the Cæsars produced. His many civic and martial
virtues had attracted to him the eyes and the hearts of the world.
These high expectations, however, his foul murder speedily and cruelly
extinguished. The attention he bestowed on the historical monuments of
Egypt enhances the regard we feel for him.
How many ingredients of interest would a picture combine which presented
to us the young Cæsar standing, as the historian describes him, in the
temple-palace of Rameses, by the side of the great kings prostrate
granite colossus, attended by his Roman suite, and some of the elders
of the Egyptian priests, who are explaining to him the records on the
monuments. A pendant to it, which would possess sufficient connecting
points and contrasts of interest, would be a picture of his adoptive
ancestor, the great Dictator, in the Palace of the Ptolemies, dallying
with the Calypso of the Nile.
Here is the passage from Tacitus’s Annals I had in my mind. ‘It
was in the Consulate of M. Silanus and L. Norbanus that Germanicus
visited Egypt. He gave out that he wished to see to the affairs of the
province, but his real object was to make himself acquainted with its
antiquities.... Starting from Canopus, and ascending the Nile, he reached
the vast remains of Thebes. Enormous structures were still standing,
covered with hieroglyphics, which chronicled the bygone grandeur of
Egypt. One of the oldest and most distinguished of the priests was
ordered to interpret to him the record. He told him that it stated that
the population of the country had, at that old time to which it referred,
been able to supply an army of 700,000 men of the military age; and
that, with that army, King Rameses had conquered Libya, Ethiopia, Media,
Persia, Bactria, and Scythia; and the whole of Syria and Armenia, and
of the neighbouring Cappadocia. That he had then added to his empire
all between the coast of Bithynia on one side, and that of Lycia on the
other. They also read the amounts of tribute he had imposed on each
nation; the weights of silver and of gold; the number of horses, and
of different kinds of arms; the offerings to be made to the temples of
ivory and of incense, and the quantity of corn, and of various kinds of
vessels. The totals were not less magnificent than those now imposed by
Parthian violence, or Roman might.
‘There were also other wonders to which Germanicus directed his
attention. Among these were the stone figure of Memnon, which, when
struck by the rays of the rising sun, emits a sound resembling the human
voice; the Pyramids, which had, in a region of drifting and hardly
passable sands, been raised by the rivalry and wealth of kings to the
height of mountains; lakes that had been excavated for the storage of the
overflow of the Nile; perplexing intricacies and inexplorable recesses,
which in no direction could be penetrated by those who might wish to
enter them. After he had visited these sights he went to Elephantiné and
Syené, the gate formerly of the Roman Empire, which, however, has now
been extended to the Red Sea.’
One would much like to know how Tacitus got these particulars of the
Prince’s Egyptian tour. Romans were in the habit of keeping diaries, and
we cannot doubt but that the practice was followed by one so accomplished
and thoughtful as Germanicus. Was it then from the journal of the Prince
himself? The family might have allowed the historian to make use of it
for the purposes of his forthcoming work. Or was it from the journal of
some unconscious Russell of the Prince’s suite? Or had Tacitus himself
accompanied the Prince?
It may be worth noticing that the account the priests gave to Germanicus
of the conquests of Rameses the Great was substantially the same as that
which had been given to Herodotus four centuries and a half earlier. It
was the same record, read from the same lithotome. Of course, Herodotus
gives to him the name, by which he was known among the Greeks, of
Sesostris.
All these monuments of early Egyptian history—for the remains of even
the Labyrinth are still sufficient to enable one to make out the plan of
the structure—our English Prince had an opportunity, a few years back,
of seeing very much in the condition in which the Roman Prince saw them
1,850 years ago. The Empire which the world was expecting would have,
under him, its eternal foundations strengthened, is now, like the Egypt
he was studying, a thing of the past. We may be permitted to entertain
the double hope, that such precious records of mans history may, for
other thousands of years yet to come, escape the common fate of man’s
works, and still not outlive the empire of their later visitor.
CHAPTER XXI.
MOSES’S WIFE.
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem.—MILTON.
Whilst at Assouan we received an intimation from the Governor that, if
agreeable, he would, at a certain hour in the afternoon, present himself
to our party. It was impossible that anything in the world could give us
greater pleasure. And so at the appointed time he arrived, attended by
a kavass and a pipe-bearer. The former he left on the bank, the latter
came on board with him. The Governor turned out to be quite as black as
a Guinea negro, but there the resemblance ended. His face was a good,
rather long oval, and his features as fine as those of a Greek Apollo.
Off a straight forehead he had a straight nose with a thin nostril. There
was no trace of coarseness about his mouth. His skin was as smooth, and
soft, and thin as that of an Arab girl. He was above six feet in height,
and clean-limbed. His build conveyed the idea of strength combined with
lithesome, panther-like agility; though, as he sat leisurely smoking
his pipe, and sipping his coffee, he did not at all look like a man who
was ever in a hurry. His manners were easy and dignified, full of grace
and smiles. He was very intelligent, and readily answered any questions
that were put to him through the dragoman about the condition of the
people, and of the country. He had been born at Assouan, and had never
been out of the neighbourhood. I regret now that I did not ask him some
questions about his parentage. I suppose his mother, at least, must have
been a Nubian, or Abyssinian. The colour of his complexion indicated
rather the former, his features perhaps the latter. Possibly there had
been much mixture of blood in his family for some generations, perhaps
through odalisque channels; for the children of odalisques and of regular
wives are treated as equals. An European might have made a companion, or
friend, of this man a footing upon which he never could place himself
with a negro.
I have given the above account of our visitor for an historical purpose.
We find that some of the queens of Egypt were black. So must have been
the wife of Moses. Their physical and mental characteristics, then, I
suppose, must have resembled those of the Governor of Assouan.
CHAPTER XXII.
EGYPTIAN DONKEY-BOYS.
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play:
No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to-day.—GRAY.
The donkey-boys, the gamins of Egypt, are a quick-witted and amusing
variety of the species. They are never sulky, or stupid. A joke is
not lost upon them, and it is pleasing to see their supple features
lighting up at its recognition. They often originate something of the
kind themselves. The detection of their attempted exactions, and little
villanies, is to them a source of merriment that is inexhaustible.
They have picked up some English. What they have acquired they teach each
other, and are always on the look-out to add, from the talk they have
with their customers, a word or two more to their small store. I was
sometimes asked by the bare-legged urchin running by my side to teach him
English. At Benihassan, having one of these volunteer scholars who was
asking the English for all the objects we passed, I found it was some
time before he could pronounce the _ns_ at the end of the word beans,
with a single emission of breath. We were passing through a bean-field.
He endeavoured to get over his difficulty by the introduction of a vowel,
making the word beanis. I had observed that the Arabs at the Pyramids
dealt with the word sphinx in precisely the same way, disintegrating the
_x_, and introducing an _i_, thus making it sphinkis. So the captain of
our boat, being unable to utter the letters _cl_ without the intervention
of a vowel, changed the name of one of our party from Clark into Kellark.
The English expression best known and most used in Egypt is ‘All right.’
With some this represents the whole language, and, with the requisite
variations in tone and gesticulation, does duty on all occasions. I heard
one evening a sailor on board the boat giving another sailor a lesson in
our noble tongue. The whole lesson consisted of the two phrases, ‘All
right,’ and ‘D⸺d rogue.’
At Karnak the donkey-boy, who happened one day to be with me, asked me
to teach him something. I told him he must first say something himself
in English, that I might be able to adjust my instruction to his
proficiency. Without a moment’s hesitation he gave the following specimen
of his attainments in the language. It may also be taken as a specimen
of the progress his youthful wits had made in the civilized art of
flattery. ‘English man come see Karnak say, “Very fine! glorious!” French
man come see Karnak say, “G— d⸺.”’ Had I been a Frenchman, the national
imprecation would have been assigned to its rightful owner.
The following day the youngster whose beast I was riding to the same
place, after having endeavoured to palm off upon me some Brummagem
scarabs, took from his bosom a half-fledged dove, and holding it up by
its wings said with a merry grin, ‘Deso bono antico.’ Italians abound in
Egypt, and many of the natives in the towns have picked up these three
Italian words. ‘Bono’ and ‘non bono’ are in universal use.
At Thebes, where the rides to the catacombs of the Kings, and in the
opposite direction to the tombs of the Queens, are long, and in the hot
desert, you will probably be attended, in addition to the donkey-boy, by
a girl with a water-jar on her head. The endurance of these little bodies
surprises one. The same girl accompanied me two days consecutively,
from about 10 A.M. till 4 P.M., running, bare-footed, over the pointed
and angular broken stones of the desert, in the blazing sun, keeping
up with the donkey, and holding all the time the water-jar on her head
with one hand. She had opportunities for resting when we were inspecting
tombs, and when we were taking our luncheon. To an European she would
have appeared about fourteen years of age, perhaps she was eleven.
She would have made a very pretty water-colour figure, with her clear
yellow ivory-smooth skin, large liquid black eyes, snow-white teeth,
coral lips and necklace of the same; the brown gooleh on her head, and
her hand raised to support it. She might have stood for her portrait,
either at the moment when, replacing the water-jar on her head with one
hand, she was holding out the other, with an imploring smile on her
face, for backsheesh; or as, with a grateful and satisfied smile, she
was depositing the piastre in her bosom. Her smooth, yellow complexion
had in it more of the crocus than of the nut, probably because she had
more of old Egyptian than of Arabic blood in her veins, through, perhaps,
some sword-converted descendant of those Copts, who had constructed their
church in one of the courts of the neighbouring temple-palace of Medinet
Habou. As to the water she carried, it had been dipped out of the muddy
river, and having been churned all day on her head in the sun, could
have possessed no merit beyond that of moistening a parched mouth and
throat. As to myself, I had no need of the little body’s water-jar. On
these occasions happy is the man whom nature has so compounded, or his
manner of life so trained, that he can go a dozen hours together without
feeling, or fancying himself, tired, hungry, or thirsty. Those who are
always craving for a bottle of beer, and are only made more heated by the
draught, are not so much their own masters as they might have been.
I fell in with an amusing specimen of the Arab village girl, at
Benihassan. I had been to the tombs that are known by the name of
this place. They are cut in the rock of the hill-side, and are as
interesting and instructive as any to be found elsewhere in Egypt, both
architecturally and pictorially. They contain some arched ceilings,
though not of construction, but excavated in that form, and sixteen-sided
piers, each face being slightly concaved, and closely resembling the
Doric style. The illustrations, on the walls, of Egyptian life in the
remote days of the primæval monarchy, to which these paintings belong,
are varied and curious. They have unfortunately been somewhat injured,
not so much, however, by time, as from the tombs having been used for
human habitation. As I was riding back from an inspection of these
antique monuments, an Arab girl, not of the crocus, but of the nut-brown
tint, attached herself to me, and was very pressing for backsheesh.
Having for some time held out against her petition, she suddenly
sprang forward a few paces, and threw herself on the ground, exactly
in the donkeys path, and became violently convulsed with a storm of
uncontrollable agony. In her convulsions she shrieked, and threw dust
on her head. I rode on, apparently without taking any notice of the
victim of overwhelming disappointment. In a few moments she was up again,
and again at my side with the same petition. A few moments later she
enacted a second time the scene of distracted agony. But finding that
one’s flinty heart was not moved in the way expected by these harrowing
performances,
With Nature’s mother-wit, and arts _well_ known before,
for the remainder of the way she ran alongside, still holding out her
hand, but now all open sunshine and winsome smiles. Her whole simple
being was so entirely bent to the one point of getting a piastre, that
the little exhibition had an interest one was unwilling to terminate.
Those who have hitherto seen only the muddy-red skins, and leathery
mulattoes of the western world, will be surprised at finding the soft,
smooth browns and yellows of the east so pleasing. They may almost come
to think that these are the most natural complexions both for man and
woman; and that in this matter the white of our lilies is—but such a
heresy is inconceivable—rather the defect than the perfection of colour.
The Cairo donkey-boy shows some sense of fun in the names he keeps in
store for his donkey. If the man whose custom he desires to secure
appears to be an American, the donkey will, perhaps, be recommended under
the name of Yankee Doodle: ‘No donkey, sir, like it in all the world.’ If
an Englishman, it may become Madame Rachel: ‘a donkey that is beautiful
for ever.’ This will be inappropriate to the gender of the beast; but
that is a matter of no consequence. If a Frenchman—the French are very
unpopular in Egypt—it will assume the name of Bismarck: ‘a very strong
donkey that can go anywhere.’ This must be meant to repel a badly-paying
customer, or it may be used to attract a German.
The unmercifulness of these boys to their donkeys—travellers would
do well to discourage it—arises partly from a wish that the present
engagement should be got through as quickly as possible, in order that
the boy and donkey may be ready for another, and partly from a wish that
you should think so well of the donkey’s pace as to be induced to hire it
again. You see what is passing in their little minds, by their frequently
asking you whether the donkey is not a good one. Should they carry their
way of making their poor beasts appear good too far for your humanity,
it may be allowable to administer to them the means for understanding
that you think the donkey ill-used, and the boy bad, and that, for this
purpose, it is the stick that is good. Theoretically, they may not
disagree with you, for they hear at home a saying that the stick came
down from heaven—by which is inculcated on the youthful mind the lesson
that it is a great gain to get off a payment that is demanded of one, by
submitting, instead, to the bastinado.
With this single exception of unmercifulness, I have nothing to say
against these juvenile Mustaphas and Mahommeds. They are always smiling,
and never tired. I had one run by my side from Bellianéh to Abydos and
back, which, I suppose, must be seventeen miles. They will gladly do you
any little service they can, carrying anything for you, or running a long
way to get you what you may want—of course, for a few piastres. When
we had got on board the steamer at Ismailia, and were on the point of
starting for Port Saïd, my companion found that he had left his binocular
at the hotel. He told a donkey-boy, who happened to be at hand, to ride
off, as fast as he could go, to the hotel, and ask for the instrument.
The boy went, and brought it back as quickly as his donkey could carry
him. Had he been dishonestly inclined, he might have ridden home with
it, for he knew that the steamer was on the point of starting. With this
probable piece of honesty in my mind, on the following day, while rowing
about the harbour of Port Saïd, I asked the Arab boatman what his father
had taught him. Had he taught him to be honest? ‘Yes, he had.’ Had he
taught him to speak the truth? ‘No, he had not.’ And small blame to him
for the omission, seeing that deception and endurance are the only means
the people have for meeting the never-ending exactions of every one in
authority.
CHAPTER XXIII.
SCARABS.
His quondam signis, atque hæc exempla secuti,
Esse apibus partem divinæ mentis, et haustus
Ætherios dixere.—VIRGIL.
It would have been strange, indeed, if the Egyptians, who were so
sharp-sighted in detecting what, from their point of view, appeared to
be the fragments of Deity scattered among the lower animals—bird, beast,
fish, reptile, and insect—had failed to observe what we regard as the
instincts of the common Egyptian beetle.
Few people visit Egypt without bringing back an antique scarab or two.
They are to be found everywhere throughout the country; and yet it must
be nearly two thousand years since one of these antiques was carved, or
moulded. In what vast numbers, then, must they have been manufactured by
the old Egyptians. The scarab is also as common in their hieroglyphics as
it is in the rubbish-mounds of their old cities. These facts give us the
measure of the impression the habits of the insect made upon them.
It is one of the commonest out-o’-door insects in Egypt. At the season
for depositing its eggs it alights upon the bank of the river, where
the soil is still moist, about the consistency of tough dough, or clay
sufficiently trodden for brick-making. Upon this it lays its eggs,
arranging them closely together. It then forms the spot on which it has
laid them into a perfect sphere, by adding clay to the top of it, and
cutting away the earth around and beneath it. The sphere being thus
completed, it thrusts the extremities of its two inward curved hind legs
into the opposite sides of it, and by pushing backwards gives to it a
revolving motion; the inserted points of its hind legs forming the axis
on which it revolves. In this way it pushes and rolls it back to the edge
of the desert, often a long way off.
Who could be so dull as not to see in this sphere, full of the seeds of
life, a perfect symbol of this terrestrial globe, formed by creative
wisdom and energy, and everywhere fraught with the quickening germs of
endlessly manifold being? And so the beetle became the symbol of the
Creator.
But when the symbol of the Creator, with his burden, the symbol of the
life-containing globe, had arrived at the edge of the desert, it there
excavated a gallery a foot or two deep—a catacomb, a grave—into which
it descended. What divine forethought in thus foreseeing the effects
of the damp, and of the inundation! and these primæval observers had
not extinguished thought on these subjects by labelling such acts as
instincts, and then putting them away on a shelf of the mind. This work,
also, of the insect did not escape them. It had, as it seemed, buried
itself. It thus, at all events, sanctioned their mode of burial: though,
perhaps, it had previously taught them where, and how, to bury—in the
dry desert, in excavated galleries. It was in this way the young world
learnt. What they thought was what they had seen.
But there was another lesson, or rather series of lessons, which, through
its wondrous transformations, this beetle taught the old Egyptians. To
begin at the beginning: the first period of its existence it passed in
a drear subterranean abode, with feeble senses, narrowly circumscribed
powers, unloved and unloving, ungladdened by pleasant sights, only
terrified by the unintelligible voices that at times reached it from the
sun-lit world above; its best pleasure to eat dirt; its only employment
to grow into fitness for future changes.
Having dragged out the time apportioned to that first base condition,
it was translated into the second. Nature’s hand swathed it into a
chrysalis. Movement now ceased. Food could no longer be taken. The
avenues of the senses were closed. The functions of life were put in
abeyance. But life itself was not extinguished; it was only suspended
while new transformations were being effected to qualify the insect for
its perfected existence.
At last, when all was completed, from the swathed-up chrysalis burst
forth a marvellously furnished body. What had painfully crawled in the
earth, now spurned the earth, and flew to and fro, at its will, in the
air. It had passed into another and totally different stage of being;
and, too, into a new world where life was bright and free. And, besides,
it was now full of Divine sagacity, such as became its new life.
All this was nature’s triptych in illustration of the three stages of
man’s being. The earth-born, dirt-fed grub represented the first, the
earthly stage, during which man is the slave of toil and suffering, the
victim of grovelling cares, the sport of ever-recurring accidents—a
knot of troubles and incapacities, in which, however, are concealed the
precious germs of eventual glory and blessedness.
The chrysalis was an explanation, which he that ran might read, of the
conditions and purpose of the mummy period, that middle stage, without
cares, or wants, or enjoyments; the long undreaming sleep, during which
the incapacities of the first stage are transforming themselves into the
capacities and powers of the last. It was so with the chrysalis: and they
believed, and taught, that it would be so with the mummy, the first stage
of whose course was now closed; and for that reason it was that they
embalmed his body into a human chrysalis.
The winged insect bursting from the cerements of its suspended, into the
happy freedom of its new aërial life, was a type, addressed by nature
to the eye, and through the eye to the understanding, to prefigure the
soul of man, at last emancipated from all earthly and fleshly hindrances,
soaring to the empyrean regions of eternal day, for the full enjoyment of
its predestined glory, for which—all that had gone before having been the
long and troublous discipline—it is now completely equipped. In that last
transformation from the chrysalis to the winged insect was an assurance
in nature’s handwriting of the resurrection from the mummy condition, in
a higher form, and with enlarged endowments.
What volumes of profoundest doctrine, what revelations in this little
beetle! For thought was not yet ossified, as in after times, into those
rigid forms, with which neither history nor our own experience is
unfamiliar, and which oblige men to reject obstinately, and to denounce
loudly, everything that does not support the existing settled system; but
was still growing vigorously, and assimilating freely what it fed on: and
so the eye and heart were still open to the lessons of nature.
The reason, then, why in modern Egypt you give an Arab boy no more than
a piastre, or two, for an antique scarab, is that when men began to
observe and think, six thousand, perhaps twice six thousand years ago,
the Egyptian beetle taught the Egyptians much. Therein was the reason why
they loved to have the stones of their rings and seals cut into the form
of this beetle. For this reason it was that they used it for amulets:
there was much of the divinity in it. This was why it became a favourite
object for bearing an inscription that was to commemorate a royal hunt,
or a royal marriage. Probably a scarab, with an inscribed record of the
event, was sent to all who had been present on the occasion. There are
such now in our British Museum. It was for these reasons that the scarab
with expanded wings was laid on the mummy. And I can imagine their having
been used in many other ways, as New Year’s gifts, as wedding presents,
as mourning rings, such as were customary here a generation or two back;
as tickets of admission to festivals and funeral processions, and even
as tokens of membership in sacred guilds and other associations, each
bearing its appropriate inscription, containing, of course, the name of
some God; for that was a sanction that was sought for everything that was
done in Egypt.
CHAPTER XXIV.
EGYPTIAN BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.
All that are in the graves shall come forth: they that have
done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have
done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.—ST. JOHN.
The ancestors of the Egyptians, when they entered the valley of the Nile,
did not come either empty-handed, or empty-headed. They brought with them
their looms, their ploughs and seed-corn, and their sheep and cattle: for
what they had been used to in the old home was what they would wish to
have in the new. They did this whether they came by land or by sea. None
of the first European settlers in the New World found any difficulty in
carrying with them their live stock across the broad and stormy Atlantic.
They brought with them also, and which was of more importance than all
the rest, their belief in an after life. We are as certain of this,
whether they came in ten, or twenty thousand years ago, as we are that,
at a geological epoch so remote from the present time that the organized
life of the Earth has since been changed again and again, there were
winds and tides, and sunshine and rain. Every branch of the Aryan family,
from the Ganges to the Thames, participated in this belief; it had,
therefore, existed among them at a date anterior to their dispersion. It
occupied in their organized thought the position the vertebrate skeleton
does in the animal organization. It was the governing idea. Everything
contributed to it, or was deduced from it: either, went to feed it,
or grew out of it. Those races of animals which have not arrived at
vertebration are the lowest forms, with the fewest specialized organs:
still they appear to have a kind of tendency towards it, or virtual
capacity for it. Just so of the mental condition of some portions of our
race with respect to this idea of a future life. There are some whose
thought is so rudimentary that it has never yet grown into this form;
but they are the lowest minds: still, even they have a kind of tendency
towards it, and of capacity for it—though, indeed, several such tribes
and people have died out without ever having attained to it. And so will
it be with many of those who, at the present day, are in this condition.
They will be swept away by those who possess the higher form of organized
thought, without their ever reaching this point in the progress of moral
and intellectual being.
If the question be asked—Why we do ourselves believe in a future
life?—the answer is—That we believe in it for the same reason that Homer
and Virgil, Cheops and Darius, Porus, Arminius, and Galgacus believed in
it—that is to say, because our remote, but common ancestors, had passed
out of the state in which thought is chaos, and had reached the state in
which thought has begun to organize itself; and because the vertebral
column of the form in which it had with them begun to organize itself
was belief in a future state. None of all of us, whether dwellers on the
banks of the Ganges, the Thames, or the Nile, could any more get rid
of, or dispense with, or act independently of, that formative column of
thought, than our animal constitution could of its formative column of
bone. Belief in God, in moral distinctions, in personal responsibility,
in the supremacy of intelligence—that is to say, that it is intelligence
which orders, and co-ordinates God, the universe, and man, would all be
powerless and unmeaning, were it not for this belief in a future life.
These, and others beliefs may feed and support it; but it acts in, and
through them, and gives them their chief value. It puts man in permanent
relation with God, and the universe. Hitherto with us nothing else has
done this. Without it these other beliefs would have been mere chaotic
elements of thought.
We must see this in order that we may understand the life, the mind,
and even the arts of the ancient Egyptians. Nothing about them is
intelligible if their belief in a future life is lost sight of; for this
it was that made them what they were, and enabled them to do what they
did. The connexion with it of their greatest achievement is close and
evident. As an instrument of human progress, language, of course, takes
precedence of everything. Nothing would be possible without it. But, if
man had stopped short at the acquisition of language, not much would have
been gained. Something more was needed, and that something was the art of
writing, which is that extension of the uses of language, without which
no serviceable amount of knowledge could have been attained, or retained.
Without this little could have been done. With it everything became
possible. The further we advance by its aid, the longer, and the broader,
and the more glorious are the vistas that open before us. Now, of this
we are certain, that the ancient Egyptians discovered this art. The idea
of the possibility of speaking words to the mind through the eye, and
rendering thought fixed, and permanent, and portable, and transmissible
from generation to generation, of committing it, not to the air, but to
stone, or, still better, to paper, first occurred to the Egyptians. And
they were the first to give effect to the idea, which they did in their
hieroglyphic form of writing, out of which afterwards grew the hieratic
and demotic forms.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this discovery. It
contained in its single self the possibility of the whole of science,
art, law, religion, history, beyond their merest rudiments, which were
all that would have been attainable without it. It contained all this as
completely as the acorn contains the oak. Where, and what would any and
every one of them now be were it not for that discovery? Indeed, what
does it not contain? There are now 31,000,000 souls within the United
Kingdom, had it not been for that discovery probably there would not have
been 3,000,000. Neither the readers nor the writer of this book would
have existed. None of the existing population of Europe would have seen
the light. Other combinations would have taken place. Europe would be
sparsely tenanted by tribes of rude barbarians—only a little less rude
in its favoured southern clime. The New World would be still unknown.
On the day some Egyptian priest, perhaps at This, thought out a scheme
for representing words and sounds by signs, Christianity, the British
Constitution, and the steam-engine became possible. With respect to so
great, so all-important a discovery, one on which the destinies of the
human race so entirely depended, every particular of its history must
be deeply interesting. Of one particular, however, at all events, we
are certain: we know where it had its birth. And this is what has made
so many in all times desire to visit Egypt. It was that they wished to
see the land of those who had conferred this much-containing gift upon
mankind—not all of them seeing this distinctly, yet having a kind of
intuition that the wisdom of the Egyptians was a mighty wisdom to which
civilization, through this discovery, owed itself.
We know, too, another particular, and that is, that this discovery was
first used for sacred and religious purposes; and it must have been
invented for the purposes for which it was first used. We can imagine
what prompted the thought that issued in the discovery. We can trace out
what it was that set the discovering mind at work. It must have been some
idea in Egypt that was more active, and so more productive than ideas
that were stirring in men’s minds elsewhere. It must have been some need
in Egypt that spurred men on more than the needs felt elsewhere. And this
idea could only have been that of the future life; and this need that
which arose out of this idea, the need of recording the laws it prompted,
and the ritual which grew out of it; and of aiding, embellishing, and
advancing in their general laws, their religious observances, their arts,
and what afterwards became their science and their history, the whole
life of the people which was struggling to rise into higher conditions,
more worthy of their great idea.
But we must give some account of what the Egyptian doctrine of the future
life actually was. Fortunately, in the Book of the Dead, we have for its
historical reconstruction the identical materials the old Egyptians had
for its construction in their own moral being. This Book of the Dead
was one of their Sacred Scriptures. Its contents are very various and
comprehensive, and are quite sufficient to give us a distinct idea of
what we are in want of here. It is divided into 165 sections. Its object
is to supply the man, now in the mummy stage of existence, with all the
instructions he will require in his passage to, and into, the future
world. It contains the primæval hymns that were to be sung, and the
prayers that were to be offered, as the mummy was lowered into the pit of
the catacomb or grave; and the invocations that were to be used over the
mummy, the various amulets appended to it, and the bandages in which it
was swathed. These bandages had great mystical importance. Some of them
have been unrolled to the length of 1,000 yards; and we are told that
there is no form of bandage known to modern surgery of which instances
may not be found on the mummies.
What has now been mentioned forms, as it were, the introductory part of
the book. The rest is devoted to what is to be done by the mummy himself
on his passage to, and entrance into, the unseen world. It taught him
what he was to say and do during the days of trying words, and on the
occasion of the great and terrible final judgment. An image of the
rendering of this awful account had already been presented to the eyes
of the surviving friends and neighbours at the funeral. It was a scene
in which the mummy had often taken part himself in the days of his own
earthly trial. The corpse, on its way to the grave, had to pass the
sacred lake of the nome, or department. When it had reached the shore
there was a pause in the progress of the procession, and forty-two
judges, or jurymen, stood forward to hear any accusations that any one
was at liberty to advance against the deceased. If any accusation could
be substantiated to the satisfaction of the judges, whether the deceased
were the Pharaoh who had sat on the throne, or a poor peasant or artizan,
the terrible sentence, to an Egyptian beyond measure terrible, was passed
upon him, that his mummy was to be excluded from burial. The awful
consequence of this was 3,000 years of wandering in darkness, and in
animal forms.
But, supposing that the mummy had passed this earthly ordeal, he was then
committed to his earthly resting-place; and this Book of the Dead, either
the whole, or what was deemed the most essential part of it, was placed
on, or in the mummy case: sometimes it was inscribed on the sarcophagus.
These were the instructions which were to guide him on the long, dread,
difficult course upon which he was about to enter. He will have to appear
in the hall of two-fold Divine Justice—the justice, that is, which
rewards as well as punishes. Osiris, the judge of the dead, will look
on, as president of the court. He will wear the emblem of truth, and the
tablet breast-plate, containing the figure of Divine Justice. The scales
of Divine Justice will be produced. The heart of the mummy will be placed
in one scale, and the figure of Divine Justice in the other. The mummy
will stand by the scale in which his heart is being weighed. Anubis, the
Guardian of the Dead, will watch the opposite scale. Thoth, who had been
the revealer to man of the divine words, of which the Sacred Books of
Egypt were transcripts, will be present to record the sentence.
The book contains, for the use of the mummy, the forty-two denials of
sin he will have to make in the presence of this awful court, while
his heart is in the balance, and the forty-two avenging demons, all
ape-faced, symbolizing man in the extremity of degradation, with reason
perverted and without conscience, and each with the pitiless knife in his
raised hand, will be standing by, ready to claim him, or some part of
him, if the balance indicates that the denial is false. These forty-two
denials have reference to the ordinary duties of human life, such as all
civilized people have understood them; though, of course, as might have
been expected, the forms of some of these duties are Egyptian, as, for
instance, that of using the waters of the irrigation fairly, and without
prejudice to the rights of others: an application to the circumstances
of Egypt, of the universally received ideas of fairness and justice,
which the working of human society must, everywhere, give birth to. The
denials also include, as again we might be sure they would, the mummy’s
observance of Egyptian ceremonial law.
There is still a great deal more in the book. The mummy will have to
achieve many difficult passages before he can attain the empyrean gate,
through which those who have been found true in the balance, for that is
the meaning of the Egyptian word for the justified, are at last admitted
to the realms of pure and everlasting light. This gate is the gate of the
Sun, and this light is the presence of the Sun-god. There will be many
adversaries that will be lying-in-wait for him, seeking to fasten charges
of one kind or another upon him, and to destroy him. The book tells him
how he is to comport himself, and what he is to do, as each of these
occasions arise. There are certain halls, for instance, through which he
will have to pass. These halls he will find inhabited by demons, but they
are a necessary part of the great journey. And the entrance to them he
will find barred and guarded by demon door-keepers. Here mystical names
and words must be used, which alone will enable the mummy to get by these
demon door-keepers, and through these demon-inhabited halls. These names
and words of power he will find in the book. We here have traces of the
thought of primitive times, when men regarded with wonder, deepening into
awe, the supposed mysterious efficacy of articulate sound.
One demon, in particular, will endeavour to secure the mummy’s head. In
a hellish place he must cross, a net will be spread to entangle him. He
will have to journey through regions of thick darkness, and to confront
the fury of the Great Dragon. He will have to go through places where
he may incur pollution; through others where he may become subject to
corruption. He will have to submit to a fiery ordeal. He will have to
work out a course of carefully and toilsomely conducted husbandry, the
harvest of which will be knowledge. He will have to obtain the air that
is untainted, the water that is of heaven, and the bread of Ra and Seb.
The book will give him all the needful instructions on these, and on all
other matters where he will require guidance.
Bunyan’s _Pilgrims Progress_ enables us to understand this Book of
the Dead. The aim of both is the same. Each presents a picture of the
hindrances and difficulties, both from within and from without, and of
the requirements and aids of the soul, in its struggle to attain to
the higher life. The Egyptian doctrine places the scene in the passage
from this life to the next. The Elstow tinker places it, allegorically,
in this life. But this is a difference that is immaterial. The ideas
of both are fundamentally the same. The consciousness to which they
both appeal is the same. The old Egyptian of 5,000 or 6,000 years ago
received the teaching of his book on precisely the same grounds as we
ourselves at this day receive the teaching of the Pilgrim. With how much
additional authority does this discovery invest these ideas! The mind
must be more or less than human that arrays itself against what has, so
overwhelmingly, approved itself _semper, ubique, et omnibus_.
The antiquity of the book is very great. Portions of it are found on the
mummy cases of the eleventh dynasty. This shows that it was in use 4,000
years ago. But this was very far from having been the date of its first
use; for even then it had become so old as to be unintelligible to royal
scribes; and we find that, in consequence, it was at that remote time the
custom to give together with the sacred text its interpretation.
All collections of Egyptian antiquities contain copies of this book,
or of portions of it. Several are to be seen in our British Museum. Of
course this abundance of copies results from the nature of the book,
and the use to which it was put. It was literally the viaticum, the
itinerary, the guide and hand-book, the route and instructions, for the
mummy to and through that world, from which no traveller returns. Each of
its sections is accompanied by a rubric, and generally illustrated by a
vignette, directing, and showing the mummy, how the section is to be used.
I know nothing more instructive and more touching in human history than
one of these old Egyptian Books of the Dead, with its doctrine, its
invocations, its hymns, its prayers, its instructions, its rubrics, its
illustrations. All its images are of the earth earthy. How could it be
otherwise? The soul that has kept all the commandments, that has been
tried in the balance and not found wanting, that has fought the good
fight to final triumph through all the dangers, and temptations, and
pollutions, that beset its path, reaches at last only a purer ether and
eternal light.
It is easy to endeavour to dismiss all this with cold indifference, or
with a cheap sneer. But those who placed this book by the side of a
departed relative had hearts that were still turned towards those they
could never any more behold in the flesh. All their care and thought
were not for themselves. And, too, they believed in right and truth, in
justice and goodness. And because they believed in them, they believed
also in a world and in a life of which those principles would be the law.
CHAPTER XXV.
WHY THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES IGNORE THE FUTURE LIFE.
Veritas filia temporis.—BACON.
It is impossible to become familiar with the monumental, and other,
evidences of the position, which the idea of a future life held in the
religious system, and in the minds and lives of the Egyptians, without
finding one’s self again and again occupied with the inquiry—Why the
Mosaic Dispensation rejected it?[5] To pass over a matter of this kind
is to reject it. If a code makes no reference whatever to the idea of
inheritance, but provides for the appropriation and distribution of
the property of deceased persons in such a manner that the idea of
inheritance does not at all enter into the arrangement, as, for instance,
appropriating it all to the State, or distributing it all among the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood, it is clear that the author of the
code rejected the ordinary, and natural ideas of inheritance. In this
way the Mosaic Dispensation rejects the idea of a future life, an idea
which was the backbone of organized thought in Egypt, and among all Aryan
people. It does not reject it in the sense of saying that it is false,
but in the sense of omitting it as unsuitable for the purposes it has in
view. It adjourns the consideration of it to another day, and to other
conjunctures of circumstances.
But this is only a part of the wonder. Solomon, one of whose wives was
an Egyptian princess, and who possessed so inquiring a mind that it is
absolutely impossible he could have been unacquainted with the idea,
nowhere in what has survived of his ethical, philosophical, religious,
poetical, or practical writings, thinks it worth even a passing
reference. On the contrary, like his father David, he emphatically speaks
of death as the end. The former had asked whether God shows His wonders
among the dead? Or whether the dead shall rise up again and praise Him?
Shall His loving kindness be showed in the grave, or His righteousness
in the land where all things are forgotten? The wisdom of the latter
promised length of these subsolar days only.
Our surprise, already great, is carried to a still higher point on
discovering that, for the six centuries which followed the time of
Solomon, the Hebrew prophets, men of the profoundest moral insight, and
whose very business it was to put before their countrymen’s minds every
motive which could have power to induce them to eschew evil, and to do
good, pass over in their teaching, just as Moses, David, and Solomon had
done before them, this paramountly influential, and to us morally vital
idea.
If one had been called upon to give an _à priori_ opinion on the
subject, it would have seemed, I think, utterly impossible that such an
omission could have been made at the beginning, considering the nature of
the work that had to be done; or, if for some exceptional, but decisive,
reason it had been made at first, that it could have been maintained
throughout. We must remember that the word throughout here applies to the
whole course of a national literature, embracing history, legislation,
philosophy, poetry, morals, and, above all, religion through a range of
a thousand years. The idea was all that time all about the people, and
those who contributed to their literature, in Persia, in Egypt, and in
Asia Minor. In Europe every tribe of barbarians, and of semi-barbarians,
and every civilized people, possessed it. It was the source of their
respective religions. It made them all what they were. But in this
all-embracing, vigorous, and long-sustained literature of the Hebrews it
has no place. It might, for some special reason, have been excluded at
one epoch, but why through all? It might, for some special reason, have
been ill-adapted to some departments of Hebrew thought, but why to all?
And the manner is as singular as the fact of the rejection. It is simply
passed over in silence. No reference is made to it. It is not discussed.
It is not denounced. It is not ridiculed. It is not insisted on: that is
all.
Here, then, is an historical problem than which few can be more curious
and interesting. We may not yet be in a position to answer it completely,
but it is evident that the first step towards doing this is to set down
all the reasons that appear to us possible, and to weigh each with
reference to the mind, and the circumstances, of the times. We may not be
able to divine all the reasons, or, indeed, the right one, but still this
is the course that must be pursued.
The right answer will depend to a considerable extent on dates, that is
to say, on the preceding and contemporary history; on ethnological facts;
and on a right appreciation of the mental condition of the people. We
shall have to ascertain the date of the Exodus; who the Hebrews were, or,
to be more precise, who the Israelites were; and what were the popular
beliefs, and forms of thought, that bore on the question before us.
With respect, then, to the date of the Exodus, we shall, if we confine
ourselves to the Hebrew accounts, find the inquiry beset with great
difficulties. It is evident, from their character, that those accounts
were intended primarily for religious, and not for historical, purposes.
Had history been their object, we should have had some Egyptian names;
the absence of which, however, from the records, alone throws some light
on their purpose. The name, for instance, of the Pharaoh under whom
the Exodus took place is not given, nor the name of the Pharaoh, whose
minister Joseph was, nor that of the Pharaoh, who reigned when Abraham
came down into Egypt, nor, indeed, of one of the kings, who reigned
during the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Nothing is told us of
the internal condition of the country, with the single exception of the
success of Joseph’s plan for enabling Pharaoh, in a time of famine, to
become the actual proprietor of the whole of the land of Egypt, save
what was held by the priests; nor is anything told us of its external
history, notwithstanding that that was its most eventful and important
period: for Egypt happened, just at that particular time, to be—having
recently culminated in the very zenith of its power—the wonder, the
terror, and the glory of the Eastern world. It was the period, which had
seen the conclusion of the long struggle between the Egyptians and their
Semitic invaders; a struggle in which the latter, having at first been
victorious, had overthrown the native dynasty, got complete possession
of the country, and ruled it for some centuries, but had in the end
been expelled. This struggle, which had terminated when the connexion
of the Israelites with Egypt commenced, was followed by a period of
unexampled greatness and prosperity. To it belong the reigns of Sethos,
whose minister Joseph was, and of Rameses II., the son of Sethos, and
the oppressor of the children of Israel. These two greatest of Egyptian
conquerors, both of them, overran Syria, and the neighbouring countries:
the latter carrying his devastations even as far as Persia and Asia
Minor. They had permanently occupied positions on the Euphrates; and were
keeping open their communications with them through the sea-side plains
to the west, and through the countries to the north, of the district the
Israelites conquered, and took possession of. Sethos had been a great
builder, but Rameses was the greatest builder the world has ever seen.
All the chief structures at Karnak, Thebes, Abydos, and in a multitude of
other places in the Delta, as well as in Upper Egypt, and even in Nubia,
were his work. What he had done in this way was so far in advance of
all that had ever been done before, that it must have been the talk of
all that part of the world. Of all these great names and great events,
no mention whatever is made in the Hebrew Scriptures, although, during
the sojourn, Egypt was actually the scene of the sacred history. The
omission is very similar to that which is the subject of this chapter,
and almost as difficult to explain. If, then, we were confined to the
Jewish accounts, it would be impossible for us to assign to the date of
the Exodus its place in the history of Egypt. There is, however, one
name occurring incidentally in the account of the oppression, which, in
conjunction with monumental evidence, enables us to fix precisely this
indispensable date—so precisely as that we are sure that it took place in
the reign of Menephthah, or Menophres, the son of the great Rameses, and
the grandson of Sethos. I shall reserve the demonstration of this till I
have occasion to mention the Canal of Rameses.
I said that the date of the Exodus has an important bearing on the
inquiry of why the doctrine of a future life was excluded from the Mosaic
Dispensation: it has this importance, because it enables us to know what
had been going on in that part of the world for some time immediately
preceding the promulgation of that Dispensation. Knowing the date, we
know that reciprocal barbarities, such as this age can fortunately
form but a feeble conception of, had for centuries been the order of
the day between the Egyptians and the Semites. At last the Egyptians
had got completely the upper hand, and had driven out the main body
of the Semites from their country, had devastated in a most sweeping,
and ruthless manner neighbouring countries, and most frequently and
most completely those parts of Syria which soon afterwards fell into
the hands of the Israelites. If we can form but a feeble conception of
the barbarities of those times, we can perhaps form only a still less
adequate conception of that which prompted them—the gluttonous hatred
that animated these two races towards each other. No amount of blood,
no form of cruelty on any scale, could satiate it. There is nothing in
the practices, the history, the religion, of the modern world which
enables us to understand their feelings. We see much evidence of them
on the Egyptian monuments, and some indications of them in the Hebrew
Scriptures; and these, of course, must be translated, not in accordance
with our ideas, but with the ideas of those times. Every shepherd was
an abomination to the Egyptians. The Hebrews took the opposite view,
and regarded the first tiller of the ground as the first murderer. The
Hebrews might not eat with the Egyptians, for that was an abomination to
them.
It is the date, which enables us, in some measure, to understand the
feelings that underlie these statements.
The next question is, who were the Israelites? We are now regarding the
question singly from the historical point of view, just as we should
the question of who were the Lydians, the Etruscans, the Dorians, or
any other people of antiquity? There is no question but that they were
substantially a Semitic people, mainly of the same race, and of the same
dispositions and capacities as the other branches of the Semitic stock,
as for instance, the Phœnicians, and the Moabites of the old, and the
Arabs of the modern world. It is clear, however, and this is a point of
some importance, that they were not of unmixed Semitic blood. Abraham
came from Ur of the Chaldees, and was therefore a Chaldean, whatever
that appellative stood for at that time. The Hebrew Scriptures describe
him as a Syrian. He can, therefore hardly be regarded as of pure Semitic
descent. Furthermore, when the people left Egypt they must have had
in their veins a large infusion of Egyptian, that is old Aryan blood,
somewhat mixed with Ethiopian. This must have been the case, because
during their sojourn in Egypt there had been no disinclination among them
to intermarry with Egyptians. Joseph had had for his wife a high-caste
Egyptian woman, Amenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On; and
the wife of Moses is called a Cushite, or Ethiopian woman. Besides this,
we are told that when the people—their blood being already mixed in this
way with that of the semi-Aryan Egyptians—went up out of Egypt, there
went out with them a mixed multitude, which can only mean Egyptians, who
cast in their lot with them, or a remnant of the Hyksos, who had stayed
behind at the time of the expulsion of the main body, or the descendants
of the Asiatic captives of Sethos and Rameses, and their predecessors. I
need not go to the Egyptian accounts. The above facts will be sufficient
for our present purpose. They enable us historically to understand
the people. They were of mixed descent, of very composite blood. The
preponderant element was Semitic, but that had been enriched by large
additions of better blood; still, however, not to such an extent as to
efface, or even to any decisive degree alter the Semitic characteristics.
The mental capacity and vigour, the apprehensiveness and receptiveness of
the people, had been increased, but still they were in the main Semitic;
in language, in sentiment, in cast and direction of thought.
At that particular juncture, then, in the history of that part of the
world to which our attention has just been recalled, Moses had to deal
with the material we are examining. Still limiting our inquiry to
historical objects, historically investigated, what he had to do at that
time was to make these mixed and unpromising materials into a people—a
work that was from first to last entirely a moral one: as hard a task as
was ever undertaken, the very idea of which has no place in the minds of
us moderns. He was thoroughly aware of the difficulty of his task. Had it
ever been heard before, and, after some thousands of years, we may add,
has it ever been heard since, of a nation taken out of another nation,
and, according even to the Hebrew accounts, the object of which is not
historical, taken chiefly from the servile class of another nation, and
yet welded into a true people, with the strongest, the most enduring,
and the most distinctive characteristics? What material was ever more
unlikely? And yet was ever success more complete? A scion, not a vigorous
and healthy offset, but a bruised sprout, was so planted, and surrounded
with such influences, as that it took good root, grew vigorously, sent
forth strong and spreading branches, and bore, and even still bears, its
own peculiar fruit. Nowhere in Europe in these days, except it may be
to some extent in northern Germany, is any attempt made to fashion in
this way the mind, and sentiments, and instincts of a people, which, and
not the amount of population, or of wealth, is what truly constitutes a
people.
Why, then, did Moses, in this great attempt, omit entirely the one
thought we consider the most potent of all? His object was to make a
people. It was not primarily to reveal a religion. We come to this
conclusion from an observation of the facts, from an analysis of the
Dispensation, and from taking into account the principle, that religion
is for man, and not man for religion. But a nation, especially such a
nation as he contemplated, is made only by moral and intellectual means.
The revelation, therefore, of a religion was not at all an accident,
or in any sense something which might be, according to circumstances,
included in, or excluded from, his plan. It was a necessity—a necessary
part of the one means for the one object. These materials could not have
been made into a people without a code, nor could there have then been a
code without a religion. The question, then, before him was not simply—as
is generally supposed—to promulgate a religion, but to make the mass
of living integers before him into a nation by a code, sanctioned by a
religion. The religious part of the question, therefore, was limited to
the consideration of what form of religion would best effect this?
One indispensable requisite was that it must be a religion that would
never take them back in thought and heart to Egypt. With Egypt he must
break utterly and for ever. This was a most difficult task. The thoughts
of the people went back to the flesh-pots of Egypt. They remembered the
fish, and the leeks, the onions, the cucumbers, and the melons they had
eaten in Egypt; but, more than all this, they remembered the palpable
and intelligible religion, the magnificent and touching ceremonies and
processions, the awe-inspiring temples—all that had satisfied at once
the eye, the heart, and the thought, while they had sojourned in, and
served the gods of, Egypt. They even recurred to the worship of the
bull Mnevis, the divinity of Heliopolis—Joseph’s On—at the very foot of
Sinai. Everything, therefore, that could recall Egypt and its religion,
everything that might present a point of contact between the thoughts,
the worship, the lives of the new people and of their old masters, was
to be studiously avoided. The dividing lines must everywhere be deep and
sharp—there must be no bridges from one to the other. So it must be. But
the doctrine of the future life was the very kernel—the heart itself—of
the religion of Egypt. There was, therefore, no choice; this must be
utterly abandoned and excluded: to admit it would be to admit Osiris,
the judge of the souls deceased this world, his assessors, and his array
of avengers, and the whole apparatus of the lower world. As to Heaven,
too, or the place of the blessed, the Egyptians had already appropriated
the sun, which, in that material age, must have appeared as the
best—indeed, the only suitable—_locus in quo_. That was already peopled
with Egyptians; and it could, therefore, be no heaven for the Hebrews—for
Semites. Or, if they were, in the end, to inhabit the same heaven,
sympathy for the Egyptians, and for their ideas, would be kept alive;
and, if so, then the design of forming a peculiar people, separate and
distinct from all other people, must be abandoned. It would be impossible
to carry it out.
This view of the reason for the omission of the great doctrine has in it,
I think, some truth, though it is far from being the whole truth. Moses
may have seen clearly that it would have been impossible to carry out
his paramount object if this doctrine was allowed a place in his system;
but this view falls short of what is required. It does not account
for the whole of the fact. It does not account, for instance, for the
doctrine not having been admitted into the system in after times—and no
explanation can be complete, or satisfactory, which does not include
that. We know, also, that Moses did not reject absolutely everything that
was Egyptian. He retained, for instance, circumcision, and the Egyptian
division of the lunar month into four weeks of seven days each, etc.
Another conceivable supposition is that, if the doctrine of a future
life had been admitted, it was foreseen that the priestly caste, instead
of remaining the ministers and servants of the congregation, would have
become its masters, as in Egypt; and that the law would then have been
wrested into an instrument for giving them undue power and domination. It
would have given them the lever for moving this world at their pleasure,
and for their own behoof; and so its primary object, which was a moral
and political one, would have become only secondary to the maintenance
of a dominant privileged class. This supposition, when applied to those
early times, is not, as the history of Egypt shows, altogether an
anachronism; and it is evident that dangers of this kind were foreseen,
and, to some extent, provided against. We see an indication of this
in the intentional absence, during the earlier periods of the history
of the nation, of monarchical institutions, which, in those times,
were, externally and politically, almost necessary, and, consequently,
almost universal in the outside world. We trace, also, this thought in
the comment made on their adoption, when it had become impossible any
longer to dispense with them. And, again, in the fact that the Prophets,
who were the authorized expositors and maintainers of the law, were
not Priests. But of this supposition, also, we must say that it does
not explain the whole of the phenomenon—for there were periods when,
notwithstanding the amount of truth and force contained in the reason it
suggests, the great doctrine might have been, but was not, introduced.
Or was it, and this I propose as a third conjecture, that the Hebrews
were too unimaginative a people to realize in thought the conception of
a future life? And, therefore, was this one instance, amongst others,
of the progressiveness of the Revelation, which had spoken in one mode
to the fathers, and which spoke afterwards—of course, within certain
intelligible limitations—in a diverse manner to their descendants? This
progressiveness every one is aware of; but I do not think that the Hebrew
was quite so unimaginative as the supposition implies. The Semitic race
is imaginative in its way. It is, and was, a gross race; which, of
course, implies grossness of imagination; but we can hardly suppose that
the Hebrew of old would have been less capable of imagining a future
Paradise than the modern Arab; though, we may be sure, it would have
assumed, like his, very much of an earthly character; and that earthly
character would not have been of the highest and most refined kind.
Feasting, for instance, would have been an ingredient in the future bliss
of a healthy and hungry people, who, in this world, had very little to
eat. And here it would be interesting to ascertain what, on this subject,
was the belief of the Phœnicians, Canaanites, Moabites, and ancient
Arabians. It is to the point, also, to remember that the Hebrew system
had a Paradise. It was, however, one which came at the beginning, and not
at the end, of all things. It was, also, an earthly Paradise. In this I
see implied contradictions to the Egyptian doctrine on this subject. And
I believe that there are other similarly implied contradictions without
direct references; and that there are such points of allusive protest,
and of intended contrast, is of importance. For instance, I am disposed
to think that the comment on the Ten Commandments—‘these words ... and
no more’ is an implied contradiction of the Divine authority of the
Forty-two Commandments, with reference to which the Egyptian believed
that he should be tried at the Day of Judgment; an article of Egyptian
faith, with which Moses, and the people who were listening to him, must
have been quite familiar; and which could hardly, at that moment, have
been absent from their minds. But as to the supposition before us, I
think, to whatever extent we may be able to allow it to be true in
itself, we shall still be unable to accept it, just as was the case with
the two others we considered before it, as a sufficient cause for the
phenomenon we are now investigating.
But I have not yet exhausted all the light that can be brought to bear
on this difficulty. I can see a fourth solution. It occurred to me at
Jerusalem. I there said to myself, ‘Let us endeavour to look at it in the
form in which it appears to have presented itself to the Divine Master.
He “brought life and immortality to light” to His countrymen, and, in
the highest sense, to us. He must, while engaged in this work, have seen
clearly the very difficulty that is now before us. It was, in fact, the
difficulty that directly, or in its logical consequences, stood up before
Him on all occasions of His teaching. How, then, did He meet it? How did
He deal with it?’ I will now proceed to propound the answer, that this
way of contemplating the difficulty evolved in my mind.
I assumed that the first step towards finding the way to the true answer
to our question was to ascertain what was precisely the work Moses had
been called to do, and what were the conditions under which he had to
do it. In order to reach a right understanding of these matters, it was
necessary to know the date at which his work was done. Without that we
should have been quite unable to reconstruct in our minds the conditions
under which he had done his work; the very chief of which were the nature
and composition of the human materials, out of which he had to form a
people, which was his great task. A similar process must here be repeated
with respect to the work of Christ: we must now make out distinctly what
it was that He had to accomplish, and what were the obstacles in the way
of His accomplishing it.
Hitherto we have been endeavouring to make out what had to be done at
the first establishment of, and throughout, the old Dispensation; and
we have summoned before us, successively, three reasons, which might
be imagined, and alleged, for the omission in that Dispensation of one
particular doctrine we might have expected to find in it. This we did
with a constant reference to the times, circumstances, and conditions of
the work. We saw, however, that not one of those reasons is sufficient
and admissible. Not one explains all the phenomena. What, therefore,
we are endeavouring to get sight of is still in obscurity. The answer
sought has not yet been found. What we now propose to do, still for the
purpose of obtaining this answer, is to recall what He taught, and what
arguments He used, Who ‘brought life and immortality to light;’ and how
in doing this He dealt with what Moses had taught, and with what he had
not taught; and how He dealt with the thoughts that were in the minds
of the people He was addressing. If this inquiry shall enable us to see
that it was, precisely, the doctrine of the future life (what Moses had
abstained from teaching) which overturned the old Dispensation (what
he had taught); and at the same time to see how, and why, it had this
effect, then we shall know why Moses, and the Prophets, had not taught it.
Fifteen hundred years had elapsed since Moses’s day. What we have to set
before our minds, now, is the conditions under which the new work had
to be done. It was new, because it cancelled, or supplemented, what was
old. It did both. How did it do it? What were the difficulties it had to
contend with? What were the obstacles that stood in its path, and had
to be surmounted? Of course, they must have been the creation of the
foregoing state of things. Let us, then, be sure that we understand the
antecedent times and events.
The object of Moses had been to form a people, in the ordinary sense
of these words; a people, that is to say, who would be well-ordered
at home, and able to hold their own among their neighbours. For this
purpose a code was the first necessity, and, indeed, it might effect all
that was required. But even a somewhat superficial acquaintance with the
history of those fifteen centuries shows us that this code must come
from God. That was a necessity. A law from man would, at that time, have
been useless, and even inconceivable. There was, however, no difficulty
about a law from God. In the spontaneous apprehensions of the people,
at that time, God was the source of all law, directly and immediately,
as distinctly as He is to our apprehensions the source of all law,
mediately and ultimately. We must make out the effect of this difference.
Theirs was the case in which the intervention of God is not confined to
principles, it being left to human legislators to apply those principles;
but it was the case in which He gives, necessarily, the letter of the
statute. Of this it is the natural, and logical, sequence, that He should
be the administrator and executor of His own law, even of what we call
civil and criminal law. Human agency, when employed, was employed only
mechanically, in the same way as a famine, or pestilence. There was
nothing in the mind of the people that could dispose them to reject this
conclusion, for they had already accepted the premises. They saw God
standing behind the law—which is regulative of society; and dictating its
letter; and, because they saw this, they could not, also, but see Him
standing behind the course of events, and bringing about the rewards and
punishments the law required.
But, furthermore, it is evident that law, civil and criminal, must be
executed here in this life. This is a concern of existing human societies
that must be attended to. The more instantaneously punishment overtakes
the offender the better. The more completely, then, will the very object
of the law be carried out, that which is the whole of its _raison
d’être_. It always has been so all over the world. To be effective, to
answer its purpose, to do what it aims at doing, its action must be
certain, speedy, visible. Punishment has two political objects, to rid
society of those who are disturbing it, and to strike terror into, and
so deter, those who might be disposed to disturb it. The object of law,
therefore, can not be attained without present, immediate punishment. The
more immediate the better. It has been so everywhere, and always. Moses’s
law, therefore, required the sanction of direct, immediate, mundane
rewards and punishments, just like any other code.
We see, then, at once, that there was no absolute need for future rewards
and punishments. We can even already imagine that they would have had
a weakening and disturbing effect upon the system: at all events, we
shall eventually find that they were, precisely, as a matter of fact and
history, the very solvent that was used, designedly, for the very purpose
of disintegrating and destroying it. As it was a system of statute law,
what was needed was that the offender should be punished here at once.
Moses had no concern with the world to come, or with the unseen world
at all, excepting so far as it could further his great object. No code
of civil and criminal law, that ever was heard of, could be maintained,
if it relegated the punishment of the offender to a future life. And,
furthermore, as God was the primary giver of the law, and the actual
source of it, so must He be the actual executor of it: it was His own
law. This was intelligible, and logical. And furthermore, it was in
perfect harmony both with the physics and the metaphysics of those
ages, among the learned and the unlearned alike. To their apprehension
everything good in nature, in society, and the mind of man, came direct
from God. God’s arm, therefore, was ever bared, and visible. Every
offence had its penalty, whether the offence of an individual, or of
the nation; and that penalty was visibly exacted at the time, that
is to say, in this life. The idea of future rewards and punishments
would have been antagonistic to this. It would have been an element of
confusion and weakness. There was no place for it. It was practically and
logically and philosophically excluded. The one thing that was paramount,
and indispensable, was thoroughly attended to. What would have acted
injuriously on that imperious necessity was set aside.
All this is clear abstractedly. And in the concrete history it comes out
with perfect distinctness. During the fifteen hundred years the law is
in force, we have not one syllable about a doctrine of a future life.
It was so, because it was absolutely logical, and quite natural, that
it should be so. Nothing else could account for the fact. It was just
what ought to have been the case. It was excluded not so much designedly
as spontaneously. There was no more place for it in the teaching of the
Prophets than there had been, originally, in the code itself, because
it would have been destructive of the system they were expounding and
enforcing. It could not, therefore, have occurred to them to teach it.
But at last, for certain reasons, the time has come for teaching it.
What now, therefore, we have to do is to mark the way in which the law
was dealt with in order that it might be taught. The object of the Light
of the World was not, as that of the code of Moses had been, to form
a people, in the ordinary sense of those words, that is, to make and
maintain in the world that political organism we call a nation, but to
form a peculiar people, that would belong to all nations. His kingdom
was not to be as the separate kingdoms of the world, but an universal
kingdom, constructed out of all the kingdoms of the world. It would
differ from the ordinary kingdoms of the world in the source, in the
purview, and in the object of its law. It would reject everything,
however necessary for national purposes, which conflicted with the
idea of the universal brotherhood of mankind, the only conceivable
principle for an universal voluntary society; and its law, for obvious
reasons, would not be a written law. It would not require that its
members should pay taxes, though it would require that they should tax
themselves to satisfy the claims of fraternity. Nor would it require
that they should fight. God would not be to them the Lord of hosts,
but the universal Father. The working of the community would give no
occasion for the use of arms. It would be composed of Jews, Greeks, and
Scythians; of bond and free; of all peoples, kindreds, and languages.
Nothing could bind together this unlocalized society but their morality.
And the only sanction, looking at mankind generally, for the morality
of an unlocalized society, would be the rewards and punishments of a
future life. The principles, therefore, of an universally applicable
system of morality, binding together a people taken out of all
nations, must be made the law of this peculiar people, this unworldly,
universally-diffused community; and they must believe in the rewards
and punishments of a future life. Their law must find both its source,
and its sanction, in themselves, that is to say, in what they felt, and
believed: whereas both the source and the sanction of the old law had
been _ab extra_.
We can see no way in which this could have been done except by
terminating that part of the old system which made the letter of every
statute, that is to say, the whole organization of society, and every
provision of every kind for the maintenance of that organization, of
Divine institution; and which, therefore, required that God should
execute His own law Himself, here, in this life. Here were two ideas,
distinct, but necessarily connected, and now they must be annulled,
both of them. Both the legislation, and the enforcement of it, must be
transferred from God to the State. Indeed the State—it had been Greek,
and now it was Roman—had already got them absolutely into its own hands.
The old law had now no existence, except on sufferance, and that only
to a limited extent. Legislation could never again be got out of the
hands into which it had fallen; and it was, in itself, far better that
it should remain in them. Of course it could not have been so with God’s
people of old time: but for the future it ought not to be, and it could
not be, otherwise.
Henceforth God would be the source in men’s hearts of the principles
only of right. Legislators must, themselves, apply those principles
to the varying circumstances and needs of their respective times and
countries. They must also themselves provide means for enforcing the
observance of their applications of these principles. But, of course,
though this might answer roughly the purposes of human societies, it
would be altogether imperfect and inadequate as a machinery either for
fairly and completely rewarding and punishing individuals, or for making
men good, or for keeping the heart pure, and gentle, and loving. All this
must still result from the relation in which man feels that he stands
towards God. Man could have little to do with these matters in his fellow
man. This world, in which ‘some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall,’
was clearly not the place for the perfect adjustment of compensations
and retributions. The balance for weighing the things that are seen
cannot be exactly trimmed here. How, then, could there be any pretence of
weighing the more important things, those that set in motion the whole
life, that cannot be seen? This necessitated a future life. The world
had passed into a state in which heaven-sent, heaven-administered codes
were impossible. But religion itself had not become impossible. It would,
however, be obliged henceforth to address itself to what God has willed
should be the general conscience of mankind, and to find its sanction
in what God has enabled man to anticipate of a life to come. This was a
higher form of religion. It belonged to higher conditions of humanity.
What was now required was not that law, or that the principles and
foundations of law, should be overthrown; but, on the contrary, that
those principles of morality, that are universal, and are commonly
recognized among mankind, should be made, with the most searching and
binding force, the law of the new society; and that the sanction of this
law should be changed from the present to the future life. Much that had
necessarily been incorporated in the Mosaic Dispensation, because needed
for its limited, national, mundane purpose, must now be held to have
answered its purpose, and to be terminated as far as the new, universal,
society was concerned. Everything that was special belonged to this head;
and, _à fortiori_, everything that was exclusive, and so conflicted with
the universal law, which was, above all things, a law of brotherhood.
It could be nothing else. In this view, the mother idea of Christianity
is the substitution, as the rule of individual life, of the universal
natural law for the positive written, municipal law of the Hebrews, and
of every other people. It has no written law of its own. It appeals to
the unwritten law, which is inscribed not on tables of stone and brass,
but on the fleshly tables of the heart; that is to say, to what is in
man. And this, we may observe in passing, it is, which enables it to live
and grow, and to develop, and accommodate itself to every increase of
knowledge, and to the advancing conditions of society.
Still local mundane governments must be maintained; and this also would
require a law. Law was, therefore, henceforth divided into two parts:
that which is universal, natural, unwritten, which God reveals to
men’s hearts, and for the observance of which they will hereafter be
accountable to God; and that which is shaped by the wisdom and the folly,
the knowledge and the ignorance, the necessities, the circumstances,
and the interests of human legislators, and of separate, often hostile,
nations. For this latter men would be accountable, primarily, to the
State. The State would enact, and must administer and execute it. Only
in cases in which the State was Christian (none such then existed, but
the time might come when the kingdoms of the world would be the kingdoms
of Christ and of God), would the principles of the municipal law not
conflict with the principles of the divine, universal law. But even in
cases where they were in conflict, the Christian, as human society is
ordained of God, would, as a matter of conscience, even when not of right
and reason, submit to it. This, however, would be understood as having
its limits, for there would be cases in which we must obey God and not
man.
(These ideas, by the way, neither condemn nor commend to us the principle
of the establishment of national Churches. That is a question of times,
of circumstances, and of expediency. We can imagine conditions under
which the advantages of such an arrangement, and others, under which
the disadvantages would preponderate. Of course, at the time of the
promulgation of the religion, the idea of anything of the kind was
impossible. What has been before us has, however, obviously a bearing on
the questions of what establishments, where they exist, should teach, and
of how they should enforce their teaching.)
As to the law, for which a man would be accountable to God, that would be
taught him by God. The knowledge of it and the desire to fulfil it would
result from the working of a Divine Spirit within his heart. The teaching
of that Spirit would be always in harmony with the knowledge to which man
had been enabled to attain, and with the social conditions to which he
had been raised. That knowledge and these conditions are progressive. So,
therefore, would be the teaching of this Spirit. We know in what mode it
spoke, in old times, through prophets and holy men; and what it was, at
a later period, in the words of Christ, Whom God sent. Under the Mosaic
Dispensation it had promulgated municipal law, which requires in all
cases, and had required, in an especial degree, in the case of so rude a
people as the Hebrews, immediate rewards and punishments; and this, under
the circumstances, the most important particular of these being that God
was Himself executing the law, here and now, had excluded the doctrine of
a future life. Under the Christian Dispensation it promulgated natural,
universal, unlocalized law, and so required the doctrine of a future
life; and this necessitated the abrogation of the doctrine that God is
Himself executing the law, here and now.
The argumentative position and aims of the Divine Master can not be
understood, unless these differences are attended to. He taught that
His kingdom was not of this world. It could not have been so taught by
them of old time. He taught that men must render unto Cæsar the things
that are Cæsar’s. Formerly it could only be taught that God was all in
all. When these, and many other similar statements of Christ and of His
Apostles are interpreted in accordance with the then existing condition
of the chosen people and of the world, we see that they involve the
entire abandonment to the civil power of the whole domain of positive
legislation, and of the entire and unqualified right of maintaining
such legislation; of course, without at all exempting legislators or
magistrates from obedience, in the exercise of their legislative or
executive functions, to the principles of right, and from ultimate
accountability to God. The authority of the old civil and criminal code
having thus been transferred from God to man, that of the ceremonial code
followed the same rule: though, indeed, these are distinctions which were
hardly recognised in early times. The law was not hereby absolutely and
necessarily abrogated, but only the idea that it is imposed, enforced,
and maintained by God in this life. That was the idea which had given
its form and character to the old Dispensation, and upon which it
had been founded, and to which the multitude, learned and unlearned,
clung, because they could not understand either how polity, religion,
or morality could be maintained without it, or how, in these matters,
there could be any advance. What, therefore, the promulgators of the new
Dispensation had to show was that the abandonment of these old ideas
about law was not tantamount to the abandonment of law itself. Man did
not cease to be accountable, and accountable to God. The old form of law,
as a heaven-originated code, and for that reason containing religion,
was abolished; but a higher and better form of law was substituted for
what had been abolished. The thing intended could now be fulfilled
more completely than before. An expansion and elasticity were given
to it, which might enable it to keep pace with every enlargement of
our moral consciousness, and of our purest and loftiest aspirations.
It was exalted, perfected, and made of universal application. What,
though necessary in its day, had, all along, been crippling, distorting,
and obscuring it, was now annulled. What was abolished was the old
letter, and its sanction; the old heaven-sent, heaven-administered,
heaven-executed code. Life and immortality could not be preached, nor
understood if that were maintained. What was not abolished, but to
which a freer and more enlarged course was given, was the living and
life-giving Spirit: the consciousness of right that is in man. That
had been in bondage under the old letter. It must now be emancipated:
otherwise it would die altogether. There was now, in the observance
of that old letter, a veil over their hearts. That must be torn away,
and then life and immortality would become distinctly visible. True,
henceforth, man would not have to give an account here, in this life, to
God, receiving his punishment or reward in this life very imperfectly:
the perception, however, of this would make visible the necessity of
his having to give an account in the world to come, in an after life,
when not a few overt acts, which are all that can be attended to in this
world, and those few only very inadequately either rewarded or punished,
but when even every word and every thought, as well as deed, could be
called into judgment; when everything could be fully revealed and known;
and exact recompense and retribution assigned.
In this way were things revealed, some of which had been kept secret from
the chosen people throughout the whole of their national existence, and
some of which had been kept secret from all people from the foundation
of the world. In this way would every scribe, who was fully instructed
unto the kingdom of heaven, bring forth out of his treasures things new
as well as old. This was the connexion and the opposition of the two
Dispensations. Divine wisdom was justified in both.
We have now before us the very pith and marrow of His teaching. It is
not in this world, as it had been taught by them of old time, that God’s
assize is held. It was not because those Galilæans, whose blood Herod
had mingled with their sacrifices, had been greater sinners than other
Galilæans, that they had suffered those things; nor had those eighteen,
on whom the Tower of Siloam had fallen, been sinners above other men that
dwelt in Jerusalem. Then follows the Parable of the Unfruitful Fig-tree,
which, instead of being destroyed, was spared again and again. God’s arm
is not now ever bare, and visible, to execute judgment on the evil-doer.
The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares is to the same purpose, only more
explicitly. What! does not God punish now as of old? Is the Almighty’s
arm shortened? Can He allow the wicked to prosper in the earth? The
answer is the end, the day of account and settlement, is not now. The
meaning of the prosperity of the wicked is not that they are being set in
slippery places, in order that they may be suddenly and fearfully cast
down. For the present God does allow the tares to grow together with
the wheat. There was more in this than met the ear. Let him whose ears
have understanding hear it. For them it had an inner, an historical,
and in the religious order, both a destructive and a reconstructive
meaning: and so we might go on with other forms of the great lesson. The
affliction the poor blind man laboured under was not a judgment—neither
he nor his parents had sinned. This is not the life for judgment. And so
does God make His rain to fall on the land of the just and of the unjust,
and His sun to shine on the good and on the bad indifferently. The rich
man, though most undeserving, had possessed, and enjoyed, undisturbed,
and to the full, all of good that this world can give; while Lazarus,
though most deserving, had suffered, without any mitigation, all of
evil this world could inflict. The balance of condition and desert had
not been adjusted in any sense, or degree, here, but was completely and
thoroughly in the after-life. It had not so been taught by them of old
time, nor could it have been. Such teaching was directly subversive
of—and, as a matter of historical fact, did subvert—the old doctrine, for
the indispensable sanction of that law was its immediate execution here
in this world. Then God could only make His rain to fall, and His sun
to shine, on the land of the just; and must withhold them from the land
of the unjust. It could have been maintained by no other teaching. But
now that the complete execution of the law was removed from this world,
a foundation was thereby laid for the establishment of the great, but
omitted, doctrine; and, together with it, of its corollary of time and
motive for repentance being in God the reason, and for man the use, of
this forbearance and of this even-handed goodness.
The above statements contain, I submit, the fundamental governing
ideas of Christ’s teaching, as it is set before us in the Gospels. No
surprise need be felt at finding that these ideas are not presented in
the sacred documents categorically. The reasons for their not having
been so propounded were quite insurmountable. It is enough that they are
the substance of them. That we should clearly apprehend that it is so,
is necessary to a right understanding of the documents, of the religion
they offer to the world, and of the history of the religion. They will,
also, often show, by an easy and sure test, what doctrines of particular
Churches are excrescences on the religion of Christ, and what are
contradictions to it.
So also was it with the teaching of St. Paul. He made the enlightened
moral consciousness of man the source of the law of religion, as
distinguished from municipal law; and he taught that the sanction for
this heart-inscribed law exists in the rewards and punishments of a
future life. For this reason the resurrection was his cardinal doctrine;
for, if there be no resurrection, he had but little, in what would be
the sentiments and opinions of the mass of mankind on these subjects, to
support and enforce his teaching. It is evident that he could not have
maintained either of these two points, if he had maintained that the old
Dispensation was of perpetual obligation. With respect to it, all he
could maintain was, that, morally and practically, it had its legitimate
issue in what he was teaching. Logically and implicitly, its requirements
had necessitated its contradicting both his two above-mentioned great
points. At all events, with respect to both, it had taught something very
different from what he was teaching. To the conjoint consideration of
what it had formerly taught, and what he had to teach now, he addressed
himself; and we find that all that he said upon these subjects was in
perfect accord with what had been said, and implied, by his Divine Master.
II. And, now that we have collected our facts, let us proceed to combine
them into a regular and synoptical argument. If, in my endeavour to
establish them, I may have been too concise, I beg the reader to call to
mind the title of this work. These are matters which, here, I can neither
pass over altogether, nor yet treat as fully as I might think desirable.
For the purpose, then, of his great work—that of forming a people,
the municipal law (this we must endeavour to separate in thought from
the religion) had occupied in the mind of Moses the first place. The
subordination of the religion to the law is evident, because the object
and use of the religion were to sanction and enforce the law. Law is
nothing, unless there be force to maintain it. In ordinary cases, the
requisite force is found in the majority, or in the strongest class, or
in an individual stronger than the community. In this case it was sought
_ab extra_: the religion was to supply it. In the dispensation that was
to be the place, and the use, of the religion. It had no ulterior, nor
collateral, objects; because it did not include in its purview the future
life. These ideas belong to an early stage of knowledge, and of thought,
in which municipal law and religion are inextricably entangled. We, at
this time, are able to disentangle them; and, while keeping them in
thought distinct from each other, to make out, in any case that may be
before us, in what relation they are standing towards each other.
But municipal codes have always required, and must, from their very
nature and purpose require, immediate rewards and punishments. This is
common to them all. Moses, as a legislator, had little, or no, concern
with anything else. His code, however, required them in a somewhat
greater degree than others, because it was to be applied to a singularly
rude and intractable people; and where the code is in advance of the
general manners and sentiments of a people, as was his, speediness and
severity of punishment are needed especially. So would it have been with
his code had it been merely as others are. On that supposition he would
probably, just as other legislators have done, and for the same reasons,
have abstained from putting forward the sanction of future rewards and
punishments. As far as his business and object were concerned, they would
have introduced considerations which, while they were irrelevant, would
also have been confusing; and must have weakened the appropriate sanction
of his law, which was so essentially his main reliance, that he could not
afford to risk its being at all weakened. Indeed, we see that it was a
great object in the code to intensify the sense of the severity, and of
the speediness of its punishments.
So it would have been, if the code he delivered had been as other codes.
On that supposition, he would, probably, have confined himself to the
rewards and punishments of this world. There was, however, one supreme
peculiarity which distinguished his from all the municipal codes of
civil and criminal law people in this part of the world have ever had
to do with; that was that it came direct from God. And it came in such
a manner and sense, that it required that God should see, more or less
immediately, to its execution. It was His law in such a sense that He
must be its executor. This meant that God did actually superintend the
distribution of the rewards and punishments it required.
This was a structural necessity. At all events it was recognized as such,
and was logically carried out in the system.
It will enable us to see this more clearly, if we consider in what way,
and on what footing, could have been introduced the doctrine of future
rewards and punishments, had they been superadded to these immediate
ones, the distribution of which was superintended by God, and which Moses
was compelled to insist on. It could, as far as we can imagine, have been
done only in one or other of the two following ways. Either he, and the
Prophets after him, must have said, and this was what they did say: ‘This
is God’s law; and God rewards and punishes all violations of it here in
this world; so that you get, here and now, the rewards and punishments
He Himself assigns to your actions, and which He Himself actually
apportions. But,’ they must then have gone on to add, ‘you will have the
same process repeated in a future world.’ Had this been announced, it
would have been equivalent to saying, that the Omniscient and Omnipotent
Judge having, according to His own law, unerringly tried, and adequately
compensated, every act, would repeat the process a second time. That is
to say, that every case, having been already adjudicated upon, without
any possibility of error, or of insufficiency of award, or of miscarriage
of any kind, would be adjudicated upon again by the same Judge, who had
in the first instance known every particular, and had, in accordance with
His own law, thoroughly dealt with it. No man in his right mind could
have propounded such a system: and in these matters Orientals, down to
the very bottom of society, are far more logical than ourselves. Jesus
precisely, because He taught that the transgressor is not tried by God
in this world, could teach that he would be tried by God in the world
to come. But this was just what Moses, and the prophets, could not say,
because their system rested on the opposite assumption.
Or, and this is the only alternative, they must have said, ‘This is
God’s law; and He executes it here. But though it is God’s business,
and in God’s hands, still, notwithstanding, it is executed in a very
incomplete and insufficient way. Many escape punishment; and many do not
get rewarded at all. And those who are rewarded and punished here, are
rewarded and punished in very inadequate measures. In every instance
there may be, indeed there is, more or less of a miscarriage of justice.
But there will be future rewards and punishments, which with set all this
right.’ Suppose this had been what had been said; and then see what would
have been the consequences. It would have suggested to every man the
thought, even the hope, that he might escape in part, perhaps altogether,
in this life, the punishment of any crime he was contemplating. But
what was most vitally needed was, that is should be seen, and felt, by
the people, that punishment would be quite unerring, and as severe as
unerring. This way of introducing the doctrine would have been thoroughly
illogical; and not more illogical than, morally and politically, bad in
its effects. It would have been illogical, because it would have been
in direct contradiction to the idea, that it was God who was seeing to
the execution of His own law: a point that was as clear to the people
as that intelligence governs the universe is to us; and which was the
very thought that gave authority and force to the law. And it would
have been morally, and politically, bad in its effects, because the
vicious, and the ill-disposed, and the would-be criminals of all kinds,
are not withheld from doing evil so much by the fear of punishment in
the world to come as by fear of punishment here in this world. Nothing
encourages them so much in their evil courses as the expectation of
present impunity. And this was peculiarly applicable to the people for
whom Moses legislated. They were, throughout the whole of the earlier
part of their history, ever ready to forget and abandon God; and their
temper required, in the highest degree, immediate punishments. Neither,
therefore, could the doctrine have been introduced by Moses in this
fashion.
Looking, then, at the circumstances, I cannot imagine how the two
systems, of present and of future rewards and punishments, could have
been taught together under the old heaven-given, heaven-administered,
heaven-executed law. A choice had to be made between teaching, on the one
hand, what was logical and in conformity with the instinctive beliefs of
the people, and might prove to be politically sufficient; and, on the
other hand, what, equally in whatever way it might have been put, would
have been glaringly illogical and full of contradiction, and could only
have caused confusion of ideas, and enfeeblement of the system. This
brings me to the conclusion that it was the doctrine that God was seeing
to the execution of His own law, in this world and in this life; this law
being also, at the same time, a code of municipal law; which in the main
decided Moses in making his choice, that is, in leading him to restrict
the sanction of his law to what was mundane and immediate.
The three other conceivable reasons we at first examined, and rejected as
being inadequate to account for all the phenomena, might have had, and
perhaps had, some weight in influencing his decision; but that decision
was, I believe, arrived at mainly on the ground of the reasons I have
just now been pointing out. No legislator could have overlooked them; and
they must have presented themselves with peculiar force to the mind of
Moses. They were reasons, too, the force of which was never at all abated
as long as the Dispensation continued in existence: just as they had
affected the teaching of Moses, so did they the teaching of the Prophets.
So was it at the origin of, and so was it throughout, the old
Dispensation. It is the object and the character of the Dispensation
which explain to us the omission. If, then, we were to conclude our
inquiry at this point, we might feel pretty well satisfied that we had
discovered what we were in search of. But we will proceed farther,
because by so doing we shall find what will confirm our discovery.
At last the time came when the old Dispensation, though still apparently
maintained, and in force, had, in reality, through the progress of
events, been completely worked out, both in respect of its moral effects
and of its sanction. It had been intended for a certain condition of
things; the world had advanced into a totally different condition; and
the spontaneous teaching of the new condition of the world brought
conviction to every enlightened mind, that the old state of things could
never be reverted to any more than manhood can revert to childhood.
The old Dispensation had been worked out morally, because it had issued
in a narrow and dead formalism. Another reason was, that the human
heart had begun to repudiate exclusiveness, which had been one of the
requirements of the old Dispensation, and to catch glimpses of, and
to yearn for, universal fraternity. A higher form of religion and of
morality could now be imagined, indeed was suggested by the condition and
the circumstances of the world, and was seen to be within men’s reach—a
morality, and a religion, which would take their start from the idea and
sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind. And in morality and religion, as
soon as anything better begins to appear, that which is not so good, _ex
rerum naturâ_, and _ex vi terminorum_, begins to lose its hold, to decay,
and to cumber the ground.
And as respected its sanction, as well as its morality, had the old
Dispensation been worked out. Centuries of foreign domination, and that
of Rome was now the apparently immovable order of the world, had rendered
impossible the supposition that the law was being executed, here and now,
by God. For that supposition national independence was the primary, and
one absolutely indispensable, condition. But God was no longer supreme,
administratively and executively, among His own people. That position
was now occupied by the Roman Governor. Under these circumstances, a
new religion, in the old form of statute law, and supported by the old
sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, the execution of which
was superintended by God, might conceivably have been at that time
promulgated, though with certainty of failure, from Imperial Rome, but
not from subject and provincial Jerusalem. That was inconceivable. For
these reasons, then, it was that the new Dispensation could not be cast,
as the old had been, in the mould of, and be made dependent on, statute
and municipal law. The same conclusion resulted also from the fact that
it was foreseen that it must be of its very nature and essence that it
should embrace all people, whatever their statute and municipal law might
be. That this feeling was springing up, coupled with the fact that the
old Dispensation was evidently worked out, both morally and in respect
of its sanction, is the meaning of the statement that the fulness of
time had come. It was evident, therefore, that no further use could be
made, either at the present, or, as far as could then be seen, for the
future, of the sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, which fall
entirely within the sphere of statute and municipal law. The only rewards
and punishments the new doctrine could resort to, as sanctions, must be
those of a future life.
It was to this state of things that the teaching of the Saviour was
addressed. And as His teaching grew out of, was founded upon, and was
logically deducible from, the existing state of things, to see this will
also be to see why what He taught had not been taught fifteen hundred
years earlier.
The old Dispensation could not be revivified. It was indeed the very
reverse of desirable to revivify it. It could not even be maintained.
If it was not dying, it was because it was dead. It had been good for
its own day; but it was now an anachronism that was both undesirable and
impossible.
The new doctrine, then, not being able to cast itself into the form of
municipal law, must appeal to the enlightened consciousness of man.
Neither could it have any municipal sanctions. The only sanction at
that time, and thenceforth, imaginable was that of future rewards and
punishments.
Still the old Dispensation stood in the way. It was, without being at all
adapted to existing requirements, occupying the ground, and hindering the
erection of the structure that was to take its place. It must, therefore,
be got rid of.
Under the conditions of the case, that could be done only
argumentatively. But what process of reasoning would serve the purpose?
We cannot see any way in which it could have been done, except the one in
which it was done. The Author of the new Dispensation addressed Himself
to the establishment of the proposition, that God is not, here and now,
the Executor either of the municipal law, or even of that which would be
the law of the new Dispensation. The end is not yet. It was a corollary
to this, which did not escape observation, that the municipal law is
Cæsar’s concern, that is to say, that it falls within the sphere of the
State.
Everything Jesus said in establishment of His main proposition, and
by implication of its corollary, was in direct contradiction to the
fundamental ideas of Mosaic Dispensation. In fact, the direct opposites
of His proposition, and of its corollary, were the old Dispensation
itself in its simplest expression: the whole of that Dispensation, just
as it stood at work amongst God’s people, and just as it is presented to
us in its authentic documents, being only the concrete enlargement, or
organized embodiment of these opposites, with a view to the maintenance,
under existing conditions, of the order of society.
The reason why Christ denied and disproved the proposition that God is
the Executor, here, in this life, of His own law—the proposition of which
the old Dispensation was an expansion—was that it hindered the perception
of, and barred Him from teaching the doctrine of future rewards and
punishments. Moses had seen precisely the same point, only reversely: for
he had seen that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments would
have barred him from teaching that God is the Executor here, in this
life, of His own law. He, therefore, and the Prophets after him, had
not taught it. Christ was restricted to the promulgation of a law which
is not directly, but mediately, from God; the mediate stage being the
moral consciousness of man; and, therefore, if we may so put it, He had
no choice but to insist on the demonstration of the fact that God does
not Himself directly execute the moral law here, for His not executing
it here is the only logical basis of the doctrine of a future life. And
He had no choice but to establish the doctrine of a future life, for the
rewards and punishments of that life are the only sanctions of the law
written in the heart. And, again, He had no choice but to promulgate
that unwritten law, for it alone could be the law of His kingdom—of the
kingdom of heaven as distinguished from the kingdoms of the world.
First, then, an examination of the position and aims of Moses, and of
the means at his disposal, or, at all events, which he was led to adopt
for effecting his work, tells us why he did not teach the doctrine of
a future life. And then we see that Christ could not logically teach
this doctrine, till He had undone that part of the work of Moses which
had been a bar to his teaching it. The work of Moses, when analyzed and
questioned, gives, itself and alone, the answer we are in search of. The
work of Christ, when similarly analyzed and questioned, confirms the
answer the work of Moses had already given. It makes clearer what was
clear enough before.
In order that the intellectual, or scientific structure of morality and
of religion might stand, instead of collapsing, and be enlarged, and
rendered more commodious, and be made suitable to the new conditions
and requirements of the world, Christ had to take out a part of the
foundations of Moses, and to substitute other foundations for them. The
foundations He took out were what had hindered Moses from teaching the
great doctrine. Having taken these out He could, as He did, insert the
great doctrine in their place as a foundation for the new religion. He
abrogated the two ideas, that God does, in this world, give and execute
the municipal law. Those two ideas being indispensable for the work Moses
had to do, contain the reason why the Hebrew Scriptures ignored the
future life.
The supersession of the old by the new Dispensation is, at all events,
an historical fact; and if our explanation of that fact is satisfactory
in the historical, it cannot be unsatisfactory in the religious,
order; because all truth, which is only the ascertained order of the
world, or sequence and relation of things and of events, is coherent
and beneficent. The following are the particulars of the fact, and all
of them appear to be sufficiently intelligible:—The law of the old
Dispensation had been regarded as given and executed by God. Under
the mental conditions of the times, it could not have been regarded
otherwise; and that view of it was true in a general and absolute sense,
because everything in the universe and on this earth is a link in the
order of things, which is aboriginal and external to man. The existence
of the material universe itself, of this world of ours, of all natural
phenomena, of man, of the order of society, and, therefore, of law, and
of the execution of law, are all, in this sense, from God. It was true
also in a relative and particular sense, because the human mind was then,
and especially was it so throughout the East, in that state in which no
conception has as yet been formed either of the existence and action of
general laws in nature and in human society, or of the spontaneity and
freedom, within certain limits, of human action. Everything, therefore,
is unavoidably and honestly referred to God, and in an especial degree
the giving and execution of the law. And so did it continue in after
times, so long as the Dispensation stood, with respect to everything that
was said or done on its behalf, or that in any way bore upon it. Every
word that every prophet uttered in exposition, enlargement, or support of
it, was regarded by the congregation, and, too, by the prophet himself,
as coming from God; and every event also that occurred in connexion with
it was brought about by God. At that epoch—we have in our hands the
evidence for the period of the Homeric poems—it was so in Greece. And,
doubtless, it was so then in Italy and all over Europe. Such ideas belong
to a certain stage in mental progress, the stage in which the world was
then. This was the natural philosophy, this was the metaphysics of those
times.
But to go on, in chronological order, with the particulars of the
general fact: at last advancing knowledge and the progress of events
began to give form to the ideas of order in nature, and of spontaneity
and freedom, within certain limits, in man. The collapse of their
own Theocracy, and their long subjection to Greeks and Romans, had
obliged the Hebrews to understand the latter of these ideas. For those,
therefore, among them who could understand facts it was an impossibility
any longer to suppose that God was the sole, immediate, originator and
executor of the law. In the minds of all such, the intellectual supports
upon which that idea had rested had been completely cut away from
beneath it. Still there was, but now removed back a step, an Originator
and Governor of the universe, and of all that it contains, and of the
moral sense among its other phenomena. This moral sense, therefore, must
henceforth be the ground of religion; for that could not be found any
longer in municipal law, which had become to their enlarged experience
only a human manifestation of the divinely-ordained working of society.
There was a Divine purpose and element in it; but in the results were
blended so many elements of human error and wrong, especially when men
were legislating, not for, or through inspiration from, the idea of God,
but for themselves, and through the inspiration of their own supposed
interests, as was the case with the heathen, that those results could not
be accepted as the frame of religion. The moral sense must, therefore,
be recognized, called forth, instructed, enlightened, purified,
strengthened, and appealed to; and all this with a constantly understood
reference to the knowledge of the day and to the existing conditions of
society. But there could be no sanction for this moral sense excepting
that of future rewards and punishments. They, therefore, must be
recognized. They must be brought to the front. Belief in them must be
laid in men’s minds as a foundation—the only foundation, with the mass of
mankind—for the desired structure.
This implied that the idea that God gives and executes here the law must
be abandoned. And with it must go the idea of His maintaining by any
means of this kind a kingdom of this world, such as the old Jewish polity
had been. Thenceforth God’s kingdom would be within. Its law would be
found, in the moral sense, in the conscience, in the moral consciousness
of the God-respecting, and so of the God-taught, individual. The old
kingdom had been external; the new would be internal. It would come
without observation. Its citizenship would not be of this world. This is
the interpretation of those chapters in the history of religion which are
contained in the whole range of the old, and in the inception of the new,
Dispensation.
God has ordained progress in human affairs. We are sure of this, for
history demonstrates it. Those affairs mean ultimately, in their
highest form, morality and religion, towards the perfecting of which
further approximations are ever from time to time being made; and
these successive approximations are the steps of true progress. The
most conspicuous instance of this progress, in the historical period,
is Christianity itself. Progress means, when we look backward, a lower
precedent condition of things just as much as it does, when we look
forward from any point, a higher subsequent condition. Of any particular
time, it means what was, in the progressive order of things, possible
under the circumstances of that time. That was what was ordained for
that time. The Mosaic Dispensation, therefore, was just as much ordained
of God as the Christian, and the Christian as much as the Mosaic. Each,
looking at the contemporary condition of the world, was from God in the
same sense, and on analogous grounds. Moses was not wrong in allowing
facilities for divorce. Under the circumstances, polygamy was one of
them, he was right. Just so with his abstention from using the sanction
of the rewards and punishments of the future life. The promulgator of
the old Dispensation, we may suppose, felt and understood that mankind
would attain, in some coming time, to a higher law than that which he
was himself delivering, when he spoke of a Prophet like himself, that
is, a moral legislator, who would some day arise, and to whom it would
be the duty of God’s people to hearken. Christianity did not contemplate
the abolition of slavery. Yet its abolition was a logically and morally
right deduction from, and evolution of, Christianity. It was done rightly
on Christian principles. If (for argument’s sake) the world should ever
grow to a higher moral condition than that apparently contemplated by
the first promulgators of Christianity, that would be no proof that
Christianity had not been ordained of God as a step in the foreseen and
appointed progress of humanity. Just the contrary. It was necessary for
that condition, which would not have been possible without it. So was it
with the old Dispensation.
* * * * *
It may, in passing, be noticed that the foregoing argument appears to
throw some light on the much-vexed question of the historical relation
of the New Testament to the Old. It, also, almost brings one to suspect
that there must be some error in that teaching which supposes that in
respect of the doctrine of a future life, and of the closely connected
doctrine of Divine Interposition, particularly of a retributive
character, in the ordinary course of human affairs the two are in perfect
accord. Of course, they are in accord, though, it would seem, not in
the way popularly taught. Their accord consists in the fact that each
treats these doctrines in the way that was logically necessary for its
own objects. Its own requirements, which were very much those of the
knowledge and circumstances of the times, is the point of view from which
each regards them.
Here I would ask leave to remark that doctrines, or different ways of
stating some particular doctrine, which, from some points of view, or to
some minds, appear discordant and contradictory, may, from other points
of view and to other minds, appear quite the reverse: that is to say,
in a higher and profounder sense they may be eminently accordant. It is
so, for instance, I believe, with the doctrines, or doctrine, for it may
be only the same idea stated reversely, of a Particular Providence and
of General Laws. Our popular theologians on one side, and our men of
science on the other, speak of the two as irreconcilably hostile, and
exclusive of each other. But is there not an eminence, higher than that
occupied by either of these two classes of expositors, from which the
two doctrines are seen to be identical? Does not, in fact, the doctrine
of general laws imply, and necessitate prevision of, and provision for,
every particular case that has ever arisen, that is now arising, and that
ever will arise? If so, then, it contains implicitly the doctrine of a
Particular Providence. And does the doctrine of a Particular Providence
at all imply that God ever acts otherwise than in conformity to the
dictates of complete knowledge, perfect wisdom, unvarying justice, and
unfailing goodness? If so, then, it contains implicitly the doctrine of
General Laws. The two doctrines, therefore, must be mutually inclusive.
Each presupposes the other. In fact, the two are one and the same thing.
If, in some points, the preceding statements and conclusions do, at
all, diverge from anything that is popularly taught on the subjects to
which they refer, there need be no attempt here to gauge and discuss
such divergences. Because all that the inquiry that has been before
us calls upon me to consider, in a work of this kind, is the higher
question (which, in fact, embraces, and is decisive of, the minor ones)
of what in this matter is historically true. We have been endeavouring
to ascertain the right interpretation, and the real connexion of some
particulars in the history of our religion, regarded as a part of general
History. That the conclusions we may be brought to have an important
bearing on morality and religion themselves, which are the chiefest
concerns of mankind, ought to have the effect of making us only more
careful, and more determined, in our search for the truth. We are all
agreed that truth, together with the effects it has on men’s hearts and
lives, is, or at all events ought to be, religion: not what any person,
or persons, at the present time think, or at any past periods may have
thought; but, as far as is attainable, the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. We owe no fealty to anything else. Any error in
this matter, just like any mistake in the statement of an arithmetical
problem, must vitiate every step that follows. If any mistakes exist in
the data, either of the arithmetical, or of the religious, problem, it
cannot be worked out to any useful conclusion. From the beginning it
was apprehended that religion was the truth. In this sense it was that
it was described as ‘the Knowledge of God.’ In no other sense can it be
‘the Inspiration of Gods Spirit.’ We, at this day, looking back over the
pages of History, can see that wherever this knowledge was clouded, or
something else mistaken for it, the result was bad; and, as far as it
went, destructive of religion. However venerable any mistakes may be, and
however useful they may appear, supposing there are such mistakes, it is
our interest, as well as our duty, to rid ourselves and the world of them
as speedily and as completely as possible.
I hardly need say that there is nothing in the foregoing argument, or in
any of the remarks that have arisen out of its course, which militates
against the ideas, that God has so ordered the course of this world as
to show on which side He is; and that He has made doing right to be good
in itself and good in its general and final consequences; and doing evil
to be evil in itself, and evil in its general and final consequences. In
fact, as much is assumed in the argument.[6]
But, however, if the discussion we have been passing through supplies
a true and complete solution of the interesting question this chapter
propounds, and I cannot but think that it does, then one of its
consequences will be, (though, indeed, it is a consequence in which
the world will not, now, take much interest) that Bishop Warburton’s
much-bruited Theory of the Divine Legation of Moses—as a schoolboy
I rejected it, but could not then answer it—will prove to be but an
Escurial in the air. That the Mosaic Dispensation made no use of the
Doctrine of a future life does not prove that it was upheld by a daily
renewed miracle. With contemporary and subsequent history before
us, we can see that the omission was originally made on logical and
administratively wise grounds.
* * * * *
We ask permission for one remark more. It will be observed that the
foregoing disquisition assumes to some degree that there is a logical
basis for belief in a future life. It is the argument which arises in
the bosom of social development. It is not precisely the same process of
thought as that which appears to have first implanted the idea in the
mind of the Aryan: that was, in some measure, founded on a sentiment,
which arose from the bosom of nature. But, however, the old Aryan
sentiment which, though a sentiment, had its logic, combined with the
distinctly logical argument, founded on the recognition and eternity of
justice, which there is no possibility of working out on the stage of
this world, where the same act carries one man to the gallows and another
to the throne, and which argument social development makes palpable and
intelligible, will satisfy many minds and must have weight with every
mind. That something, and even that much, can be said on the other side,
is a remark of no weight. It is merely an assertion that, in this
respect, the question before us does not differ from other moral and
religious questions. The same observation may be made of every one of
them; for this is a world, as all must see, in which belief, just like
virtue itself which is the matured fruit of belief, can be the result
only of a right choice, after honest deliberation, between conflicting
considerations. This is of its very essence. The great argument, however,
itself, and everything that depends upon it, are lost to, and obscured
by, those who have persuaded themselves, and are endeavouring to persuade
others, to accept precisely what Christ overthrew, and which He overthrew
precisely that He might establish belief in the future life.
* * * * *
I have dwelt on the question of this chapter, not on account of its
intrinsic interest, although that is great, but because it is a necessary
part of the survey of old Egypt. The history of Egypt must include some
account of the influence it had upon the world; and a great part of
that influence had to pass through, and be transmitted onward by, the
Hebrews. It was imperative, therefore, in a work of this kind, that some
attempt should be made to obtain a true conception of the relations of
Israel to Mizraim; and the most essential part of those relations is
that which is intellectual, moral, and religious. This appears to be the
only intelligible meaning that can be attached to the reference ‘out of
Egypt have I called my son’: His capital doctrine was what had been the
capital doctrine of Egypt. If, however, the reference was not intended
to have any meaning in the intellectual, moral, and religious order,
this passing comment is non-suited and must be withdrawn. But, whatever
may be the value of the explanation I have been just attempting to give
of the particular question that has been before us, the fact itself
remains, standing forth on the long records of history as one of the
most important they contain, that, while the belief in future rewards
and punishments was the motive power of morality and religion in Egypt,
among a neighbouring people, who had in some sort been a secession from
Egypt, and always continued to be more or less affected by it, morality
and religion were able, under most adverse circumstances, to maintain
themselves for fifteen centuries without any formal or direct support
from this belief.
Verily we are debtors to the Jew for the great lesson contained in this
fact. Another religion—that one indeed which at the present day commands
the greatest number of believers—does, as some of its own doctors tell
us, leave open, to a considerable extent, this question of future rewards
and punishments, contenting itself with teaching that virtue is its own
sufficient reward; and that should it have any consequences in a life to
come they cannot be evil: and the bearing of this evidence on the point
before us is not unimportant. Those, however, who are in the habit of
passing by unheeded what more than 300,000,000 of the human family have
to say on such questions, will not think it immaterial what the Jews
believed. And never had any people more unclouded faith in the eternity
and ultimate mundane triumph of truth, of right, and of goodness than the
Jews, although they seldom had any thought, and then only very dimly;
that they should themselves participate in, or witness that triumph:
they lived and died in the faith of it, never having been supported and
strengthened by the sight of it, but only by the desire to see it: the
better condition, which was to make perfect theirs, having been reserved
for other times. Never, however, were any people more ready to sacrifice
everything, even to life itself, in proclaiming, and endeavouring to
carry out, what they believed. It was this that prompted, and made
successful, the Asmonæan insurrection against Greek domination; and which
afterwards impelled them to challenge single-handed the world-Empire of
Rome. Contemporary history, like much that has been written subsequently,
did not understand, indeed quite misunderstood, their motives, and what
was stirring within them; and so failed to do them the honour they
deserved for their heroic efforts to prevent the extinction of their
religion and morality. We, however, can now, at the same time, both
do them justice, and acknowledge our obligations to them, for having
taught us that the moral sentiments have such deep root in man’s nature;
and can maintain so vigorous an existence by their own inherent power,
without aid from other-world hopes and fears, and against all of force or
seduction with which this world can assail them. This, I submit, throws
light upon much that, at the present day, and amongst ourselves, stands
somewhat in need of proof and distinctness.
It shows, I think, that there are in our composite mental and bodily
constitution principles, or laws, of morality, which, as they are
indestructible, and capable of maintaining themselves, and of acting
vigorously, under even the most adverse circumstances, must be regarded
as inseparable and essential parts of our being. This fact in the
natural history of morality may be illustrated by an analogous fact in
the natural history of language. A man cannot but use language, and he
cannot but use it in conformity with certain rules and laws. He cannot
alter one law of language any more than he could invent a new language:
he can even hardly add a single word, deliberately and designedly, to an
existing one. And he must not only use language in conformity with its
natural laws, but he must also use that particular form of it which the
working of general laws has developed, necessarily, both for him, and in
him. Just so is it with morality. Indeed, the parallel is so complete as
to lead one to suspect that morality must to some considerable degree
be dependent upon language. Man seems to invent it; and so he does in a
certain sense. But, however, he cannot help inventing it; and he must
invent it in conformity with certain laws. Over these he has no control:
for though he must use, yet he does not invent, or originate, them.
That falls within the sphere of a Higher Power. In some form or other,
better or not so good, and in some measure, more or less, morality is a
congenital necessity of our being, and if society be fairly and wisely
dealt with (but of this when we speak of the wisdom of Egypt, and again
in our summing up) there are grounds for disposing us to believe that
moral, and not animal instincts, may in any people be made the lords of
the ascendant.
It will be enough to say here that extremes, then, appear in some
sense to have met. We believe just as distinctly as the Jew, or as the
Egyptian, that the law came from God; that in it God speaks within us,
and through us; and that our part is to hearken to, to bow down before,
and obey the Divinity. This involves morality, religion, responsibility,
conscience. They saw this through moral intuition. We see it also
through history and science. The primæval intuition, and the modern
demonstration, constructed out of the materials with which our hoards
of experience and observation have supplied us, are in perfect accord.
Intuition prior to knowledge, and accumulated knowledge reasoning out
the problem, have both arrived at the same conclusion: and so we have
sufficient grounds for believing that no other conclusion is possible;
and that what history has demonstrated to be inseparable from the working
of society, and from the being of man, will endure as long as society and
as man shall endure.[7]
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE EFFECT OF EASTERN TRAVEL ON BELIEF.
Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing whereby we fly to Heaven.—SHAKSPEARE.
The question that I find has been most frequently put to me since my
return home is—What effect travel in the East has on belief?
What the effect may be in any case will, of course, depend on what
were the ingredients and character of the belief. If, for instance, a
traveller makes the discovery that old Egypt was far grander, far more
civilized, and far more earnest than the mention of it in the Hebrew
Scriptures had led him to suppose, he will receive a shock; or if a
man finds the agricultural capabilities of the greater part of Syria
utterly unadapted to English methods of farming, and has no idea of
other methods; and if, furthermore, he is ignorant of the ways in which
commerce can maintain a large population anywhere, he will receive
another shock. We can imagine that such persons will ever afterwards
affirm that the effects are bad. They were bad in their own minds, and
they cannot see how they can be good in any other mind.
We will take these two instances first. Suppose a different kind of
traveller, one who had previously arrived at some not altogether
inadequate conceptions of the mind, and of the greatness of old Egypt.
He had also observed the fact that these things are not dwelt on in
the Hebrew Scriptures, and had formed some opinion as to the cause of
the omission. Then he will receive no shock from what he sees in the
monuments of the greatness of Egypt, and of the evidently high moral
aims of its religion. Suppose, again, that he had quite understood that
he should not see the same kind of agriculture in Syria as in Suffolk;
and that when he was among the hills he had found, often to a greater
extent than he had expected, that formerly every rood of ground had been
turned to account; it is true, in a very un-English manner, but still
in a manner well adapted to the locality; that terraces had been formed
wherever terraces could be placed; that corn, figs, olives, vines had
been grown on these terraces (on some hills the actual summit is still
a vineyard), and that, where the ground was not suitable for terracing,
it had been depastured by flocks and herds; and that there is evidence
that many hills must have been clothed from the bottom to the top with
olives. And suppose also that he was quite aware that populous cities
could have been maintained by trade and commerce in Judæa just as easily,
to say the least, as were Palmyra and Petra in the wilderness. Then he
will receive no shock from the un-English agricultural aspects of Syria.
Instead of any disagreeable sensation of that kind, he will see in the
present desolation of the country interesting and instructive evidence of
a change in the channels of commerce, and a demonstration of the sad fact
that where the Turk sets his foot, although he is a very good fellow,
grass will not grow.
But to go on with the discoveries that cause shocks. With many Jerusalem
is the great stumbling-block. If, however, we can imagine a traveller
visiting the Holy City with sufficient historical knowledge to enable
him to recall in a rough way the city of David and of Solomon, we may
be quite certain that he will, as far as that part of the subject goes,
receive no shock from the modern city. The same, too, I believe, may be
said, to a very great extent, even of the city of Herod. One who can
rightly imagine what that city was externally will not, I think, be
disappointed at the sight of modern Jerusalem. I am not now speaking of
the Greek traders, the Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, and Sadducees,
who might have been seen in the streets, but of the city itself. It
must be seen from the Mount of Olives, and I submit that the grand Mosk
of Omar, as beheld from that point, is a far more imposing structure,
architecturally, than the temple of Herod was likely to have been, which,
when seen from a distance, being in the Greek style of architecture, was,
probably, too much wanting in height to produce any very great effect.
The Mosk combines great height with variety of form, for there are the
curves of the dome as well as the perpendicular lines of the walls and
great windows. The dwelling-houses, too, of the modern city must, with
their domed stone roofs be more imposing than those of the old city.
The cupolas and towers of the churches, and the minarets of the mosks
are additional features. The walls also of the modern city are lofty,
massive, and of an excellent colour; and I can hardly think that those
of old Jerusalem could have added more to the scene. Herod’s Palace,
and the greater extent of his city are probably the only particulars in
which what has passed away was superior to what is seen now. As looked at
from the mount of Olives this day, the city does not appear to contain a
single mean building. History, then, will again save the traveller from
receiving a shock at the sight of the outward appearance of Jerusalem; or
if it must be felt, will much mitigate its force.
The traveller, however, might be one who had never rambled so far as the
field of history, and was only expecting to find in the Christians of
Jerusalem, that is, in the specimens of the Greek and Latin communions
there, living embodiments of the Sermon on the Mount; but instead of
this, finds littlenesses, frauds, formalism, animosities, dirt. Of
course, he receives a shock; and this is, perhaps, the commonest shock of
all. But the fault was in himself: he ought to have known better than to
have allowed himself to indulge in such unlikely anticipations.
Every one, then, of these shocks was unnecessary and avoidable.
And now let us look at another order of suppositions. Suppose the
traveller is desirous of understanding something about the efforts that
have been made to interpret, and to shape man’s moral and spiritual
nature under a great, and, on the whole, progressive variety of
circumstances, out of which has arisen, from time to time, a necessity
for enlarging and recasting former conclusions, so as to include the
results of the new light, and to adapt ideas and practices to new
circumstances: then what he sees of the East, and of its people, will
help him mightily in understanding what he wishes to understand. We are
supposing that he has limited his expectations to certain clearly-defined
objects, such, for instance, as the observation of what now can be seen,
that will throw light on the history of the people, whose record is in
the Sacred volume, on what kind of people they were, and how it came to
pass that they became what they were; and on what it was in the natural
order that made their minds the seed-bed for the ideas, with which,
through their Scriptures, we are all more or less familiar; and on what
there was in the people that made the moral element more prominent and
active in their civilization than in that of Greece and Rome: that is to
say, if his objects are strictly limited to what can be investigated and
understood by what one sees in the East, because it is the investigation
and understanding of what may be seen in the Eastern man, and in Eastern
nature; then I think that travel in Egypt and Syria will not cause any
shocks or disappointments. On the contrary, I think the traveller will
feel, on his return home, that he has brought back with him some light,
and some food for thought, he could not have obtained elsewhere.
As to myself: for of course I can only give my own experience; and
equally, of course, it is only that that can be of value, should it
happen to possess any, in what I may have to say on this question: I now
feel, as I read the sacred page, that I understand it in a way I never
did before. It is not merely that I can, sometimes, fit the scene to the
transactions—that is something; but that, which is more, I am better able
to fit the people to the thoughts, and even to understand the thoughts
themselves. The interest, therefore, and possibly the utility, too, of
what I read is increased for me. I have seen the greater simplicity of
mind of these oriental people. I have seen that the moral element in
them is stronger, either relatively to their intellect, or absolutely in
itself—I know not which—and obtains more dominion over them than over
our beef-eating, beer-drinking, and indoor-living people; that the idea
of God is more present to them than to us, and has a more constant, and
sometimes a deeper, power over them.
Observations of this kind enable one to see and feel more clearly what
was in the minds and hearts of the old Orientals. This is true of the
whole of Scripture, from the first page to the last; but in an especial
manner is it true of the Psalms and of the Gospels. Before I visited
the East I saw their meaning through the, to a certain extent, false
medium of modern English thought. Elements of feeling and meaning, which
before were unobserved and unknown, now stand out clear and distinct. I
seem to be conscious of and to understand, in a manner that would have
been impossible before, the depth and the exaltation of feeling of the
Psalms, and their wonderful didactic beauty, the result, clearly, of
the feelings that prompted them, rather than of the amount and variety
of knowledge they deal with. The simplicity, the single-mindedness, the
self-forgetting heartiness of the morality of the Gospel, also, I think,
gains much from the same cause. I think, too, that I understand now,
better than I did before, the fierce tone in which the Prophets denounced
existing wrongs, and their unfaltering confidence in a better future.
And as it is in great matters and on the whole, so is it in small
particulars. For instance, I heard a tall bony half-grey Syrian Arab,
in whose mind I had but little doubt that the thought of God was ever
present, cursing the God of the Christians. It had never crossed his mind
that the God of the Christians was the same as the God of the Mahomedans.
Here was the persistence to our own day of the old exclusive idea.
A poor native Christian at Jerusalem told me that he believed the holy
places were not known now, because, in these days, men were not worthy of
such blessed knowledge. The old idea again of the superior holiness of
past times. And so one might go on with a multitude of similar instances.
I will here give a tangible and distinct example of the change in one’s
way of looking at things, and of the consequent change in feeling, which
travel in the East actually brought about in one’s mind, naturally
and without any effort, just by allowing the trains of thought that
spontaneously arose to take their own courses, and, in combination with
pre-existing material, to work themselves out to their own conclusions.
Formerly I never read the account of the deception Jacob practised on
his father at the instigation of his mother, and at the expense of his
brother; or the imprecations of the 109th Psalm; or the account of the
way in which David, for the purpose of appeasing God (Who was supposed
to be terribly afflicting an innocent people for the mistaken zeal on
His behalf of a deceased king), gave up seven innocent men, sons and
grandsons of Saul, to be hanged by those whom Saul had sought to injure;
without wishing, as I believe almost everybody does, every time he
hears these passages read, that, by some process of beneficent magic,
they could be made to vanish from the Sacred Volume, and be heard of
and remembered no more for ever. But now they appear to me in quite a
different light, and I regard them with quite different sentiments. Now I
am very far indeed from wishing that they could be made to vanish away.
I have been among people who are, at this moment, thinking, feeling, and
acting precisely in the way described in those passages; and so I have
come to regard them as containing genuine, primitive, historical phases
of morality and religion, and as giving to the record, and just for this
very reason, no small part of its value. This primitive morality, which
has been kept alive all along, or to which men have again reverted,
in the East, belongs to the stage in which subtilty, although it may,
as in the instance before us, palpably mean deception, has not yet
been distinguished from wisdom; when men think they are serving God by
being ready to inflict any and every form of suffering, and even, if
it were possible, annihilation itself, on the man who rejects, or who
does not support, their ideas of morality and religion; and when the
current conception of responsibility is made to include the family and
descendants of the evil-doer. These very misconceptions and aberrations
are in conformity to the existing sentiments and daily practice of the
modern Oriental. With him deception is a perfectly legitimate means for
obtaining his ends; nor, in his way of thinking, is any infliction too
severe for misbelievers and blasphemers of the Faith; and in the custom
of blood-feuds the innocent descendants of the man who shed blood are
answerable for the misdeed of their forefather. These, then, and similar
mistakes, the contemplation of which is so painful to us, were honestly
made, and were even consequences of deliberate and careful efforts to
act up to moral ideas under the conditions and in conformity with the
knowledge of the times.
I have thus come to see that morality and religion,—and this includes my
own morality and religion—are, in no sense, an arbitrary creation, but a
world-old growth. Thousands of years ago they were forming themselves,
in some stages of their growth, on the hill of Zion, as they had been
previously in earlier stages on the banks of the Nile, and as they did
subsequently in the grove of the Academy, on the seven hills of Rome, and
in the forests of Germany. This has been brought home to me by actual
acquaintance with people whose morality and religion are different from
my own—the difference very much consisting in the fact that they are
still in the early stage to which the ideas in the passages referred to
belong. To associate and to deal with people who are mentally in the
state, which the old historic peoples were in, is to have the old history
translated for you into a language you can understand. What I now find in
myself was once, in its earlier days, just what I find described in those
passages. My morality and religion, which are my true self, have passed
through that stage; that is to say they were once in the stage of the
Patriarch and of the Psalmist. Virtually, I was in them. My more perfect
condition, therefore, must share the blame which mistakenly appears—this
is a mistake into which unhistorical minds fall—to belong only to their
more imperfect condition. Both are equally parts of the same growth. I
now look upon these earlier stages of my moral being as I do upon my own
childhood. To speak of the ideas, or of the acts of the Patriarch, or of
the Psalmist as, perhaps, I might have been disposed to speak of them
formerly would, I now feel, be to blaspheme my own parentage. I look with
a kind of awe on the failure—so shocking and so intelligible—of their
efforts to find the right path upon which, through a long series of such
efforts, I, their moral offspring, and heir, have at last been brought.
Now I link myself to the past, and I feel the power and the value of
the bond. Now I know that my religion and morality are not a something
or other of recent ascertainable date; a something or other that has
come hap-hazard; even that might, conceivably, never have been. They are
something, I know, that appertains to man; that came into being with him,
indeed that is of his very being; that has grown with his growth, and
strengthened with his strength; and which accumulating experience and
enlarging knowledge have, all along, ever been purifying, broadening,
deepening. I see distinctly, now, that they rest on foundations in man
himself, which nothing can overthrow or shake. A conviction is brought
home to me that I am standing on an everlasting rock. Formerly there
might have been some lurking germ of suspicion or misgiving that I was
standing on ground that was not quite defensible. Universal history,
rightly understood, dissipates these enfeebling misgivings, and generates
that invaluable conviction. It is a conviction which nothing can touch,
for it rests on incontrovertible facts and unassailable reasonings; and
which are such as will justify a man in expending his own life, and in
calling upon others to do the same, for the maintenance and advancement
of morality and religion.
And this connexion with the past appears to give a prospective as well as
retrospective extension to my being. If I am in the past, then, by parity
of reason, I am equally in the future. As my moral and intellectual
being was, in this way, forming itself before I was in the flesh, it
will continue, in the same way, the same process after I shall have put
off the flesh. The dissolution of the body will not affect what existed
before the assumption of the body.
These thoughts I did not take with me to the East, or, if I did, they had
at that time only a potential existence in my mind as unquickened germs.
It was what I saw and felt in the East that gave them life and shape. At
all events, I brought them back with me as recognized and active elements
of my mental being.
I am aware that there are some on whom the sight of the diversities
observable among different peoples in moral and religious ideas has an
effect the very contrary to that which I have been describing. Instead
of helping them to bring their knowledge on these subjects into order,
and giving them solid foundations to rest the structure upon, it appears
in them only to make confusion worse confounded, and to render more
incapable of support what had in them little enough support before. But
may not this arise from the fact that the true idea of history does not
exist in the minds of these persons? For I suppose that just as true
science infallibly generates the craving, and, as far as it reaches, the
successful effort, to harmonize all nature, so does true history the
craving, and, as far as it reaches, the successful effort, to harmonize
all that is known of man. One man observes differences in moral ideas,
and thence infers that it is impossible to arrive at any fixed and
certain conclusions on such subjects. Another man observes the same
differences, but observing at the same time that they are those of growth
and development, thence infers that the principle of which they are the
growth and development must be as real and certain as anything in the
earth beneath, or in the heaven above.
There is no difficulty in understanding the prepotency these ideas
must have in modifying and forming a man’s conceptions of duty and of
happiness.
* * * * *
I have, then, no commiseration for those who receive the kind of shocks
we spoke of at the beginning of this chapter. If a man goes to the East
with anti-historical and unreasonable expectations, there is nothing in
the East, or the wide world, that can, so far as his expectations go,
be of any use to him. Wherever he comes upon truth it will shock him.
Nor do I think that travel in the East will be of advantage to the man
whose minute apprehension is incapable of taking in anything higher than
points of Zulu criticism. This is the criticism of people who, like those
kraal-inhabiting, skinclad philosophers, are all for small particulars,
and who appear to labour under a congenital incapacity for large views,
and for general ideas. According to their logic, the best established
general proposition in contingent matter is not only utterly false, but
even inconceivable, if they can adduce a single case, or point even, in
which it fails. If one of this sort were to find a burr on your clothes,
he would be unable to see your clothes for the burr; or if he were to
go so far beyond the burr as to form any opinion about your clothes, it
would be that they were bad clothes, because of the burr. I have known
a person of this kind so perverse, that if you had told him that his
wife and children had been burnt to death on the first-floor of a house,
the intelligence would have had no effect upon him, if he chanced to
suppose that you were inaccurate, and were calling the ground-floor the
first-floor. He would be incapable of attending to the intelligence you
had brought him, till this had been rightly understood, and set right.
Till that had been done, he would be unable to think of anything else,
or talk of anything else. Such is the mind of the Zulu critic. Still,
however, there is a place for him, and he is of use in the general scheme.
But my late excursion to the East not only led to the question which
stands at the head of this chapter having frequently been put me, and
which may be regarded as illustrative of the mental condition of an
educated stratum of society amongst us, but it also led to my obtaining
the following illustration of the mental condition of the uneducated
class amongst us.
Shortly after my return I had the following conversation with one I knew
to be a good specimen of that class—an honest, conscientious, religious
soul.
‘They tell me, sir, you have been a long away off.’
‘Yes, neighbour, I have been to Jerusalem.’
I thought Jerusalem might touch a chord, but was not sure that Egypt
would.
‘What! Jerusalem, sir?’ with great surprise.
‘Yes: Jerusalem.’
‘Now, sir, you have surprised me. I did not know that there was such a
place as Jerusalem in the world. I had always thought that Jerusalem was
only a Bible word.’
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF INTERPRETATION.
God who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in times
past to the Fathers.—_Epistle to the Hebrews._
It belongs very closely to our subject to determine in what sense
the Hebrew Scriptures are to be interpreted, because, if the popular
interpretation is to be maintained at every point, Egyptology, and a
great deal more of what eventually must, and now ought to be, used in the
construction of religious thought, will continue for a time to be deemed
in popular opinion, and to be represented by its guides, as hostile to
religion. I would, then, submit that, if universal history is to be aided
at all by the Hebrew Scriptures, or if they are to be applied to any
historical purpose whatever, they must be interpreted according to the
received canons of historical criticism.
Those who deny this accept, in so doing—if they are logical and
consistent—one or other of two alternative consequences: either that all
contemporary and antecedent history is contained in the interpretation
they put upon the sacred records—that is, in what at present happens
to be the popular interpretation—so that nothing that is not contained
in, or deducible from, or in harmony with, that interpretation is to be
received as history; or else that history has nothing at all to do with
the documents, or the documents with history.
There are, however, other people, not less learned nor less desirous
of attaining to the truth, who are completely incapable of accepting
either of these two alternatives. They value the Holy Scriptures too
highly to treat them in this way. They believe that, though their
primary object was not historical, they contain much history of many
kinds, and of great value. History of events, of the human mind, of
conscience, of religion—much of the history, in one word, of man, or of
humanity; but, furthermore, they believe—and in this lies the gist of
the controversy—that what they contain on any one, and on all of these
subjects, is to be ascertained only by critical investigation. The single
historical question with them is, when the documents have been rightly
interpreted, what do they really contain?
They believe that the purpose, the character, and the contents of the
documents, alike, preclude the idea of fraud and deception. The thought
of the existence of any thing of the kind in them had its birth,
naturally and unavoidably, in the popular interpretation. A false and
ignorant interpretation was met by a false and ignorant attack. It could
not have been otherwise; for both belong to the same age. No one, then,
can be deceived by these documents, excepting those who interpret them
ignorantly and wrongly. It is a question of interpretation. A false
interpretation has surrounded them with difficulties, and in a great
measure destroyed with multitudes their utility and their credit. The
true interpretation will remove these difficulties; and where mischief
has been done, restore their credit and utility.
But there appears to some a preliminary question: that of the
right of interpretation. About this there, however, can be no real
question at all, even among those who support what we call the popular
interpretation. How can they deny to others the right they claim for
themselves, of adopting the interpretation that appears to them most in
accordance with truth and fact? The third, the twelfth, the sixteenth,
and all other centuries, had a right to interpret the document in the way
which at the time seemed true. The nineteenth century has the same right.
The men of other times interpreted it according to the combination of
knowledge, and of ignorance, that was in them. We must do the same.
Let us see, then, what is the difference between the popular, and the
historical methods of interpretation. Proximately we shall find it very
great; ultimately not much. But the point before us will not be fully
understood until it be seen in a distinct concrete instance. The popular
method goes on the assumption that the modes of thought, and the modes
of expression of early ages, and of other races of men, must be accepted
by us in the sense in which we must take anything addressed to ourselves
by a contemporary author. This, the historical method tells us, is an
impossibility. It has been rendered impossible by subsequent advances
in knowledge, in the generalization of ideas, and in language through a
larger use of general and abstract terms. The historical method says that
archaic modes of thought, and modes of expression, must be translated
into our modes of thought, and our modes of expression.
I will now give an instance that will include both. In those early
times men had not been trained, as we have been, by ages of culture,
to think abstractedly. They could only think, if we may so express it,
concretely. It was necessary that a palpable image of what was meant
should be before their minds. This was what made idolatry so attractive
to the people Moses led up out of Egypt. It was so to all the young
world, and is so still to all who are in the infancy of thought. And it
was so in a pre-eminent degree with those Moses had to deal with, for
they had been mentally degraded below even the level of the times, by
the hard slavery in which they had been kept for some generations. Even
among our own labouring class this inability to think abstractedly is
very conspicuous. Their want of intellectual training, their ignorance,
their life of toil, their poverty of language, particularly of abstract
and general forms of expression, are the cause of it. They can never
tell you what they themselves said, or what anybody else said, except
in a dramatic form. With them it is always ‘I said,’ and ‘he said;’ in
each case the very words being given. They cannot indicate the purport
of what was said by the general, or abstract, form of expression that
a man consented, or hesitated, or refused compliance, or remonstrated,
&c. General forms of thought and expression are beyond them. Nor will
they, for they cannot, tell you simply that a thing was done: instead of
this they must tell you every step of the process. That which is very
remarkable, in this nineteenth century, in one class, amongst ourselves,
was a law, a necessity, of thought among those with whom Moses had to
deal.
As a foundation, then, for the theocratic system he was about to
establish, he had to announce the idea, not perhaps altogether new to
some of those who had come out of Egypt, but one to which the thought of
Greece and Rome was never conducted, that God was the Creator. Suppose,
then, that he had contented himself, as we might, at this day, with
stating it in that abstract form. We may be absolutely certain that the
statement would have fallen dead on the ears of the people, to whom he
had to address himself. They could not have taken in the idea. No effect
whatever could thus have been produced upon them. He was therefore
obliged, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity, to present the idea
to them in the concrete. That is, to give them a series of pictures of
creation. This, he had to say, was the picture of things before creation
begun. This was what was done first. This was what was done next. And
so on throughout the whole. And this was what was said at each act of
creation. When the idea was presented to them in this concrete, dramatic
form, they could understand it, and take it in. It was the only mode of
thought, and the only mode of expression, that were possible then. When
translated into modern modes of thought, and modern modes of expression,
they simply mean God is the Creator. Nothing more. Those who would press
them further, do so because they are not acquainted with the difference
between archaic, rude, uncultured modes of thought and expression, and
those of minds that have received culture, and been benefited by the
slowly maturing fruits of ages of culture.
This method of historical criticism offers similar explanations of much
besides these first chapters of Genesis. It tells us that good, and true,
and God-fearing men, and who were moved by a holy spirit, which they
described as coming to them _ab extra_ (in which their metaphysics, if
erroneous, were honestly so) could hardly in those times have thought,
or expressed themselves otherwise than as they did; and that if, through
some realization of the Egyptian idea of the transmigration of souls,
they had returned to earth, and were now amongst us, with precisely the
same yearnings for justice, truth, and goodness they had been moved by in
those primitive days, they would not express themselves now as they did
then, but as we do. Their metaphysics would have become the same as ours.
But in either case there would be no difference in their meaning.
It is evident, by the way, that the historical method of interpretation
differs also, in the effect it has on the feelings and practice, from
the popular interpretation of the present day, and of former times. It
is evident, for instance, that it could not lead a man to denounce the
mythology and religion of Egypt, the aims of which were distinctly moral,
as the invention of devils. The old popular methods of interpretation,
also, naturally sanctioned the persecution of those who differ from us
in religion, as they did at the time of the Crusades; and of those who
differ from us only in interpretation, as in the case of the treatment
of the Vaudois; and in the still more shocking case of the creation and
maintenance of the Inquisition, one of the most dreadful episodes in
human history. The historical method, however, suggests nothing of the
kind. It can regard such extravagancies only as contradictions of the
meaning and purpose of religion.
But to go back to the contrast between the popular and the historical
methods of interpretation as applied to the particular instance I
selected, that of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis. Some little
time back I met with the following illustration of the errors into which
we must fall, if we feel ourselves obliged to take them precisely in
the sense that would belong to their words, had they been addressed by
a living writer to ourselves. There happened to be an equestrian circus
exhibiting in the neighbouring town. The gardener who was in my service
at the time had rather an inquisitive mind; and the word equestrian,
which occurred in the posters that announced the performance, puzzled
him; and as he did not like to give his money without knowing what it was
for, he asked me what the word meant. I told him it meant an exhibition
in which horses bore a part, and that the word was derived from _equus_,
the Latin name for a horse.
‘No,’ he exclaimed, ‘that can’t be right.’
‘Yes,’ I rejoined, ‘it is so.’
‘No;’ he continued, ‘it is impossible; because we are told that when the
animals were created they were all brought to Adam, and that whatsoever
he called each, that was the name thereof. So horse must be the name of
the animal all over the world for ever. Being an animal, it can have only
one name: the name Adam gave it.’
Argument was useless. For him to have been persuaded of anything that
contradicted his literal interpretation would have been to abandon belief
in the authenticity of the book.
Here then we have the popular method actually at work. We see the whole
process. And the way in which it demonstrated to my gardener that _equus_
could not possibly be Latin for horse, is much the same as the way in
which some other conclusions have been arrived at, with which everybody
is familiar, but with which very few people are satisfied.
The attempt to get over the difficulties of the literal method, in the
instance that was just now before us, by abandoning it at one point
only, that of the meaning of the word ‘day,’ has three disadvantages.
First that of abandoning a principle while loudly and energetically
professing to maintain it. Secondly that of addressing itself to one
particular, and not to the whole of the subject. And, thirdly, that of
being, in itself, surpassingly preposterous. For who ever did doubt, or
could doubt, that in the place referred to, the word ‘day’ means, and was
intended to mean, the space of our twenty-four hours? Is not this the
meaning attributed to the word in the reference made to the first chapter
of Genesis in the Decalogue? And are we not told, in the body of the
narrative itself, with the most emphatic iteration, that the period of
time intended by the word is what is comprised in the evening and morning?
On the other hand the historical method of interpretation explains
satisfactorily, both why the work is divided into days, and why the
constituent parts of each day are spoken of. This was done, because to do
so was in conformity with archaic modes of thought and expression.
In this there is nothing forced or strained. Above all it is perfectly
true. It also explains everything.
* * * * *
The attempt to place all we know of the stratification of our earth, of
the series of changes that have been effected in the relations of the
sea and land, and in extinct Floras and Faunas, on the further side of
‘the beginning’ of the first verse of this first chapter of Genesis, is
equally portentous. Here again, all the difficulties of the narrative are
left wholly unexplained, and the student is referred to an arbitrary,
and contextually impossible, assumption, and told that it contains a
sufficient answer to every objection. This interpretation makes the
explicit statements of the subsequent account direct contradictions to
the (by the supposition) implicit meaning of the first verse. One cannot
but think that those who propound an interpretation of this kind have no
suspicion of the mischief they are doing. It is impossible that its worse
than hollowness could, in any case, escape detection one moment beyond
the time that a man, who has but a very small store of knowledge, begins
to think. And then, as all experience proves, the revulsion that ensues
against such teaching (and revulsions of this kind generally reach the
subject itself also, on behalf of which such teaching is advanced) is out
of all proportion to the gain—and what kind of gain is it?—temporarily
secured from ignorant and unthinking acquiescence.
Of course, the word ‘beginning,’ just like the word ‘day,’ and all the
rest of the narrative, was intended to be taken by the rude people to
whom the pictures of which the narrative is composed were submitted,
precisely in the sense in which it was always taken by them; that is to
say in the sense in which plain words are taken by plain people. And then
arises the question we have been considering, How is all this to be taken
by ourselves?
As our ideas rest on a different basis, that of scientific demonstration,
we can acknowledge, in respect of any particular, that we are ignorant,
either of the _modus operandi_, or of the time required for the
operation, or of both. But Moses could not do this: he could deal with
these matters only in conformity with the requirements of his purpose,
and with the facts of the times.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE DELTA: DISAPPEARANCE OF ITS MONUMENTS.
Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one
stone upon another that shall not be cast down.—_St. Mark._
The respective fortunes of the monuments of Upper Egypt and of the Delta
have been very different.
In the Delta there was a large number of populous and wealthy cities.
Five of them—Tanis, Bubastis, Sais, Mendes, and Sebennytus—were of
sufficient importance to have given rise to dynasties; and, therefore,
each had, in turn, become the capital. So many great cities were probably
never before arrayed on so small an area. The duster of flourishing
commercial and manufacturing towns in the Low Countries, offers the
nearest approach to it in modern times. These, however, were supported
primarily by manufactures and trade, while those of the Delta were
supported primarily by agriculture. The base of the Delta along the air
line, from Canopus to Pelusium, was not 140 miles, while its two sides,
from its apex to those cities, were only about 100 miles in length.
Every one of these numerous cities of the Delta had its grand temple—some
more than one. Many were, even for Egypt, of unusual extent and
massiveness. They were generally built of the finest granite. At Tanis
there was a temple of this kind. It had been erected by the great
Rameses. In one respect, at all events, more had been done for it than
for any other temple in Egypt, for it was enriched by at least ten
obelisks. In its construction granite had been largely used. As Rameses
built with sandstone at Karnak, Luxor, and Thebes, which were different
quarters of his great capital, and where he must have wished to make the
chief display of his magnificence, why was he not content with it in the
Delta? We here find him using a far more costly material, and one which
he had to fetch from a greater distance than the sandstone quarries of
Silsiléh. The only imaginable reason is, that he desired to build for
eternity, and that he was afraid that the sandstone he was employing in
Upper Egypt might, in a long series of years, feel the effects of the
damp in the Delta, at all events to such an extent as that the sculptures
might suffer. The sandstone is remarkably hard and compact, and he
was satisfied with it in the dry climate of Upper Egypt; but he had
misgivings as to its power of resistance to the climate of Lower Egypt;
and therefore, that he might not incur any avoidable risk, he went, in
the Delta, to the additional expense of employing granite from Assouan.
And now a word or two about the city itself. This Tanis had from very
early days, as we now know, been conspicuously connected with the history
of Egypt. The importance of the place had been recognized in the days of
the old primæval Monarchy, for we find in it traces of Sesortesen III.,
a mighty Pharaoh of the XIIth Dynasty, and whose name is found at the
other extremity of the land on the Theban temples. Its position it was
that gave it this importance, for it was on the flank of all invaders
from the North or East; and, too, on the very spot where there were more
facilities for establishing a stronghold than anywhere else in Egypt.
Being on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, and not far from its mouth, it
could receive supplies and reinforcements both by the river, and by sea;
and being behind the Pelusiac branch, it could make that its first line
of defence against an enemy coming across the desert, who as he would be
without boats, and would find no materials for constructing them in such
a district, would have but a very slight chance of effecting the passage
of the river. As the city was also placed in the low district which now
forms Lake Menzaléh, it, doubtless, was in the power of its defenders at
any time to lay the surrounding country under water. The forces collected
in this strong position, would, if themselves strong enough, be able to
attack an invader, while yet in the desert; or, if this were thought more
advisable, to fall either on his flank or rear, as he advanced along the
Pelusiac branch.
In the Hebrew Scriptures the place is called ‘the Field of Zoan.’ Sân
is its present name, and Zoan is probably a nearer approach to the
old Egyptian form than the Greek Tanis. The expression of ‘the Field
of Zoan’ was, of course, meant to be descriptive of the character of
the surrounding country. There would have been nothing appropriate in
speaking of the Field of Memphis, or of Thebes. It indicated that the
district had been originally, as it is again at the present day, composed
of pools and marshes, just what our fens once were, but that by a system
of dykes and drains it had been reclaimed. And so, just as we might talk
of the Fen of Boston, they talked of the Field, we should say the Fen, of
Zoan.
Such having been the character and position of Tanis, it does not
surprise us that it was made the royal residence, and in some respect,
the capital, in the time of the Hyksos. Not only was it the nearest point
to their old home, from which they might at times be glad to receive some
assistance, but as it commanded the road into Egypt they had themselves
so successfully traversed, they would naturally wish by strengthening
the defences of the place, and residing there themselves, to use it as a
bar against any who might make a similar attempt. More traces of these
conquerors are found here than anywhere else in the land. And it is very
interesting to see in these traces that they adopted, just as we might
have expected, the religion of Egypt; and yet that they did not, in so
doing, abandon that of their old home. For there is evidence that they
placed by the side of the temples of the gods of Egypt, temples to Set
or Soutekh, the Egyptian name of the Assyrian Baal. This was the obvious
compromise of the opposing difficulties that beset them in this matter.
They could not abandon their own morality; and, on the other hand, the
conquerors and the conquered could never become one people as long as
their moral ideas and sentiments were different. Of course the Gods, and
the services of religion, were the external embodiment and representation
of these ideas and sentiments.
On the expulsion of the Hyksos we find the history of the Great Pharaohs
of the XIXth Dynasty closely connected with Tanis. Its magnificent
temple, as we have already mentioned, was built by Rameses the Great.
Meneptha, his son, was holding his court here at the time of the Exodus;
and it must have been with the militia of the neighbourhood, where a
considerable force of the military caste was settled, that he pursued the
fugitive Israelites. We are, therefore, prepared to find that at last it
became the actual recognized capital of Egypt. This was brought about
under the XXIst Dynasty. It had come to be seen that under existing
circumstances Thebes was no longer the best position from which the
country could be guarded and governed. It was now the opposite extremity
of the country that needed all the vigilance that could be exercised, and
where should be placed the head quarters of the military power of the
Empire.
We now come to Bubastis. The great temple of this famous city, of which
Herodotus gives a minute account, and which appeared to him more finished
and beautiful than any other structure in Egypt, was nearly a furlong in
length, and of the same width. It was built throughout of granite. Its
sculptures also bear the name of the great Rameses. It was placed on a
peninsula, formed in an artificial lake in the middle of the city. The
isthmus leading to the sacred enclosure was a strip of land between two
parallel canals from the Nile. Each of them was 100 feet wide. They fed
the lake which completely surrounded the temple, with the exception of
the isthmic entrance. The width of the lake was 1,400 feet. Along the
sides of the isthmus were rows of lofty evergreen trees. As the ground on
which the city stood had been raised by the earth excavated from the bed
of the lake, and by other accumulations, to a considerable height above
the temple enclosure, the spectator looked down on the temple of red
granite, the green trees, and the water from all sides. We can understand
Herodotus’s preference for this temple. Most of the particulars of his
description and measurements can still be traced out. Of the temple
itself, however, only a few scattered stones remain, but these are
sufficient to show of what materials, and by whom, it was built.
It was to Bubastis that the XXIInd Dynasty transferred the seat of
Government. Almost all the names of this Dynasty are Assyrian. The
strange apparition of these names is accounted for by the probable
supposition that its founder was a military adventurer, who, while
stationed in this city, had become connected by marriage with the Royal
Family. This semi-foreign House occupied the throne for a little more
than a century and a half, when Tanis again became the capital under the
XXIIIrd Dynasty.
The temple of Sais could not have been inferior, in extent, or in
costliness, to those either of Tanis, or of Bubastis. It was built partly
of limestone and partly of granite. Here were buried all the kings of
the Saite Dynasty. Herodotus dwells upon its magnificence. Its propylæa
exceeded all others in dimensions. It, too, had its lake, on which were
celebrated the mysteries of the sufferings of the martyred Osiris.
Like the temple of Tanis, it had its obelisks, and, besides, several
colossi and androsphinxes. The margin of its sacred lake was cased with
stone; but its chief ornament was a shrine composed of a single block
of granite, in the transport of which, from Elephantiné to Sais, two
thousand boatmen had been employed for three years. This shrine was 31
feet long, 22 broad, and 12 high. The lake, but without the stone casing
of its margin, and the site of the temple remain, but every other trace
of all this magnificence has almost entirely disappeared.
The last Capital of Egypt, in which the wealth, culture, and glory of
the old Pharaohnic Empire were completely revived, and exhibited to
the world, was Sais. This revival took place under the XXVIth Dynasty;
and, fortunately for us, was witnessed and described by the Greeks.
Absolutely, and in itself, the country, probably, was then quite as great
in all the elements of power as it ever had been in the palmiest days of
the famous times of old; but, relatively, the sceptre had departed from
Egypt. The arts which minister to and maintain civilization, and endow
it with the ability to organize, wield, and support large armies, had
travelled to the banks of the Euphrates, and from thence were spreading
over the highlands of Media and Persia. By a law of nature civilization
first germinated, and bore its precious fruit, in the teeming South, but
by a right of nature Empire belongs to the enduring and thoughtful North.
History contains the oft-repeated narrative of the fashion in which
those, who have successively received the gift, have successively repaid
it by subjugating the donors. The Assyrians had already, taking advantage
of the disturbed state of the country during the XXVth Dynasty, looted
all the great cities of Egypt, from Migdol to Syené. But where prosperity
does not depend on the use and profits of accumulated capital, but on
the annual bounty of Nature, recovery is very rapid. And to this bounty,
which was larger and more varied in Egypt than anywhere else in the
world, by reason of its winter as well as summer harvest, there had now
been superadded the unbought gains resulting from her having been allowed
to become what nature had intended her to be, that is, the centre for the
interchange of the commodities of Asia, including India, of Africa, and
of Europe.
Sais was placed on the Canopic, the most westerly branch of the river, at
a distance of about forty miles from the sea; between which and it was
Naucratis, where the Greeks had been allowed to establish a factory and
emporium. In the city also of Sais itself a quarter was assigned to them,
where they were governed by their own laws, administered by magistrates
selected from among their own body. As Psammetichus, the founder of the
Saite Dynasty, had been raised to the throne, and was maintained upon
it, mainly by the aid of Greek mercenaries, we can hardly suppose that
this contiguity of the city he made his Capital to the source from which
so much of his support was derived, was accidental. It was in accordance
with his policy towards the Greeks that he granted a Factory to every
other nation which was desirous of maintaining one, giving to all equal
liberty to trade in the land. From the same motive he had his children
taught Greek.
Facts of this kind imply the complete reversal of the old national policy
of seclusion. The Government, and it must have been seconded by the
general approval of the people, saw that seclusion could no longer be
maintained, while at the same time the opposite system was offering to
the country very great advantages; and so, just as is the case at the
present day with the Japanese, the requirements of the new conditions
were speedily and unreservedly accepted. The military caste, however,
whose susceptibility was offended at the employment of, and still more
at the preference which was shown to, a large body of Greek mercenaries,
was an exception to the general acquiescence. To the number of 240,000
they seceded from Egypt; and, having been well received in the now rival
country of Ethiopia, were settled in a fertile tract of land which was
bestowed upon them in the neighbourhood of Meroé.
Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, was desirous of pushing
the new commercial policy of his Father to its utmost limits. With this
view, he undertook to adapt for navigation, and to prolong to the head
of the Arabian Gulf, an old canal, that had for many centuries connected
Bubastis with Lake Timsah, in order that every impediment to the traffic
of the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean might be removed. He had
carried this great work as far as the Bitter Lakes, when, from some
military, or perhaps for an agricultural, reason, he abandoned the work,
after having expended upon it the lives of 120,000 of the Fellahs of
those times. Herodotus saw the Docks which, as a part of this plan, he
had constructed on the Red Sea.
The only incident in the History of Geographical Discovery which can be
set by the side of the great achievement of Columbus, is this Necho’s
circumnavigation of Africa. These two enterprises resemble each other
not only in hardihood, grandeur, and success, but also in being equally
instances of the happy way in which the scientific, and even the
semi-scientific, imagination at times divines the truth, or the real
nature of things. The truth, indeed, appears to possess not only some
power of suggesting itself, but also of compelling the mind, to which it
has suggested itself, to undertake the demonstration of its being the
truth.
It would be unfair to the Father of History to make mention of this
famous undertaking in any words but his. “Libya itself,” he says,
“enables us to ascertain that it is everywhere surrounded by water,
except so far as it is conterminous with Asia. The Egyptian King, Necho,
was the first we know of who demonstrated this. He did it in this
wise: when he had abandoned the attempt to dig the Canal from the Nile
to the Arabian Gulf, he despatched a squadron manned by Phœnicians,
with instructions to sail on till they got back into the Northern
(Mediterranean) Sea, through the Pillars of Hercules; and in this way
to return to Egypt. These Phœnicians, then, having set sail from the
Erythrœan (Red) Sea, entered on the navigation of the Southern Sea (the
Indian Ocean). When the autumn came, they would draw up their vessels on
the beach, and sow what land was required, wherever they might happen to
be at that point of the voyage. They would then wait for the harvest, and
when they had got it in, would again set sail. In this way two years were
spent; and, in the third year, having doubled the Pillars of Hercules,
they returned to Egypt. They said what I cannot believe, though some,
perhaps, may, that while they were sailing round Libya, they had the sun
on their right hand. So was first acquired a knowledge of the contour of
Libya.”
Necho also pursued the policy of his Father in attempting to recover
for the Double Crown of the then reunited Upper and Lower Egypt, the
Asiatic dependencies, of which the Assyrians had despoiled it. For
nine and twenty years had Psammetichus been barred in the first step
of this enterprise by the obstinate resistance of Ashdod, which had
thus sustained, as Herodotus observes, the longest siege then known to
History. At last, however, it had succumbed; and being now, again, in the
hands of the Egyptians, the old line of march into, and through, Syria
was open, and Necho set out for the re-conquest of the old provinces. He
could not deem that his Egypt was the Egypt of Tuthmosis and Rameses,
unless what they had held along the maritime plain of Syria, and
back to Carchemish on the Euphrates, and which had been—more or less
completely—in subjection to Egypt during the intervening nine centuries,
with the exception of the short period of Assyrian supremacy, had been
recovered. As might have been expected, he could not see that, though
Nineveh had fallen, its power had only been transferred to Babylon; and
that behind Babylon was being organized the Empire of the still more
energetic Persians, which was soon to overshadow all that part of the
world. It was, in truth, only wasting his resources to retake Carchemish:
he should have attacked Babylon itself. Nothing was gained if its power
was not destroyed. But, however, as he advanced along the maritime plain,
with which the Egyptians had been familiar from time out of mind, Josiah,
we know, attempted to stop him at Megiddo, where he was defeated and
slain.
The Hebrew Prophets of these times saw as clearly, as we do now, that the
course of events had transferred the constituents of power from the Nile
to the Euphrates; and so they became the uncompromising instigators of
this anti-Egyptian policy. Of course it would have been wise in Josiah to
have remained quiet: his best policy would have been that of “masterly
inactivity.” Necho, however, as it happened, having easily crushed him,
did not allow himself to be diverted from his main object by the tempting
facility thus offered to him for at once taking possession of the Kingdom
of Judah, but continued, as rapidly as he could, his advance to the
Euphrates. Having reached Carchemish, and provided sufficiently, as he
thought, for the permanent re-occupation of all that had thereabouts
“pertained to Egypt,” he returned home; and, by the way, settled,
without any resistance having been offered to him, the conditions of the
subjection of the Kingdom of Judah.
At this juncture Egypt must have deemed that all was recovered, and
that everything was again, and would continue to be, as of old. Isaiah,
however, and Jeremiah, and the other Prophets of the time were right; for
the Babylonians were not long in expelling the Egyptians from Asia.
Necho was succeeded by his son Psammis; and he by the Apries of
Herodotus, the Pharaoh Hophra of the Hebrew Scriptures. Egypt is still
very rich and prosperous, and so he makes another attempt for the
recovery of the dominion of Western Asia. In this effort he attacked
Phœnicia both by sea and land. Still no change, or vacillation, is
perceptible in the utterances of the Hebrew Prophets. They at all events
are not misled, or dazzled, by the riches and greatness of Egypt. Ezekiel
sees, just as Isaiah and Jeremiah had seen, that the valley of the Nile
can no longer be the seat of Empire; and that the capacity for acquiring
it had passed into the hands of their North-Eastern neighbours.
In the reign of Amasis, the successor of Apries, “Egypt,” as Herodotus
tells us, “reached the very acmé of its prosperity. Never before had the
river been more bountiful to the land, or the land to those who dwelt
in it. It contained 20,000 inhabited cities.” Such was the Egypt Amasis
marshalled against this invading host of Persia. But to no purpose:
the single and signal defeat his son sustained at Pelusium, the very
threshold of the land, gave to Cambyses the whole country. From that day
to this Power has continued the Northward course it had then commenced;
and, consequently, there has been no resurrection for the first-born of
civilization, the inventress of Letters, and of Political Organization,
and of so many of the arts that better man’s Estate, and embellish life.
This, to some extent, hides from our view the fact that we are, greatly,
what we are at this day, because Egypt had been what she was in the
prehistoric times.
At Sais and Bubastis were held two of the great annual religious
Assemblies and Festivals of the Egyptians. It naturally occurs to us to
ask, why at these two cities of the Delta, and not at primæval This,
royal Memphis, or imperial Thebes? The answer that first occurs is that
these two then modern Capitals may have been selected in order to bring
them into repute, and invest them with an importance, they would not
otherwise have possessed. This supposition, however, is, to some extent,
negatived by the known antiquity, at all events, of Bubastis, and by
the remark of Herodotus that the Egyptians were the first of mankind
to institute these religious gatherings and fêtes: we are, therefore,
precluded from imagining that their chief celebrations of this kind dated
only from the Bubastic or Saite Dynasties. We can also see that the
people of Upper Egypt, all of whom dwelt on the actual bank of the river,
would be more disposed to come down the stream to the Delta, than the
people of the broad Delta would be to ascend the stream to This or Thebes.
These great annual Feasts answered several important purposes. They
impressed the same religious ideas on all who participated in them; and
this contributed much to national, as well as to religious, unity and
amalgamation. By their tone also of gladness, festivity, and licence
they temporarily lightened the yoke of an austere religion, and provided
a recognized vent for some very natural, and not unhealthy, impulses
of our common humanity. Just what the Saturnalia were to the ancient
Roman, and what the Carnival is to his modern representative, the Feast
of Bubastis was to the old Egyptian for some thousands of years before
the name of Rome had been heard on the seven Hills. The reader may form
his own opinion on this point by turning to the account of the Festival
given by one who four centuries and a half before our era was travelling
through Egypt, and who we may be pretty sure himself witnessed what he
thus describes. “While those, who are about to keep the Feast, are on the
way to Bubastis, this is what they do. The men and women go together;
and there is a large number of both sexes in each boat. Some of the women
are provided with castanets, and some of the men with pipes, upon which
they perform throughout the whole of the voyage. The rest of the men,
and of the women, accompany them with singing, and with clapping their
hands. When, as they sail along, they have reached any city, having made
fast their boat to the bank, some of the women do what has been already
mentioned, while of the rest some assail the women of the city with
loud cries and scurrilous jibes, others dance, and others stand up, and
make immodest exhibitions. They go through these performances at every
river-side city. When they have reached Bubastis they keep the feast
with unusually large offerings, and there is a greater consumption of
grape wine at this feast than in the remainder of the whole of the twelve
months. The number of men and women who are brought together on this
occasion, for the children are not reckoned, reaches, as the Egyptians
themselves say, to 700,000 souls.”
I will append his account of the Feast at Sais. “When the people are
assembled at Sais for the solemnity, on a certain night everybody lights
a great number of lamps, in the open air, in a circle round his house.
The lamps are cups full of oil mixed with salt. The wick rests on the
surface, and burns all night. This is called the Feast of Lamps. All
Egyptians who happen not to be present at the gathering, wherever they
may be, light lamps; and thus there is an illumination not only in
Sais, but throughout the whole of the country. A religious reason is
given to account for this particular night having been thus honoured
by illumination.” He does not give the reason; but as we know that the
Festival was in honour of Neith, the Egyptian Athena or Minerva, or of
Osiris, we may suppose that the old Egyptians were the first to use light
shining in darkness as the symbol of the mind-illuminating power of the
Divine Spirit.
A few fragments of granite, in the mounds of the old city, are all the
remains of the former greatness of Sebennytus.
Only six miles, however, from Sebennytus are the rubbish-heaps of Iseum.
Here are the ruins of a most stately temple, every stone in the walls and
roof of which was an enormous block of granite. No other material had
been used. So regardless had been its builders of cost, that throughout
the greater part of the structure they had sculptured this intractable
adamant in unusually high relief. But though it had been thus massively
constructed of imperishable materials, and decorated with such lavish
expenditure, it was so completely wrecked, that now the traveller finds
in its place merely a heap of stones. What had been the temple is there,
but not one stone has been left standing on another.
And so we might go on throughout the whole Delta. Every few miles would
bring us to the site of a city that once was great—the distinguishing
feature of the greatness of which had been its temple. The peculiarity
of them all was that the material chiefly used in their construction was
granite. In most cases, the very materials of which the temples were
constructed have utterly disappeared, though the spot on which each
stood is still easily distinguishable. In some few cases, where the
temple was of unusual extent—Iseum is the most conspicuous instance of
this—considerable proportions of the materials remain, but even there
everything has been thrown down, and, as far as possible, destroyed.
The reason generally given for this, in every case, utter ruin, and
in most cases complete disappearance of the monuments of antiquity
throughout the Delta is, that the climate being rendered comparatively
moist by the contiguity of the sea, has not been so favourable to their
preservation as the drier climate of Upper Egypt has proved to the
monuments of that district. The difference in the hygrometrical condition
of the air, and the rain that falls occasionally in the Delta, will not
account, I think, for the effect that has been produced. The climate of
Gizeh is not very different from that of the actual Delta, and here five
or six thousand years have not in the least affected the original casing
at the top of the Second Pyramid. The obelisk that had been standing
for very nearly two thousand years on the very beach at Alexandria, and
which for the previous two thousand years had stood at the apex of the
Delta, has not been affected to such an extent as would contribute, in
any appreciable degree, I will not say to the overthrow, but to the
injury, of any building ever raised by an Egyptian architect. And yet at
Alexandria these supposed disintegrating influences are at their maximum,
and are aided by the salt-impregnated drift from the sea in the case of
this obelisk, which has, notwithstanding, outlived for so long a period
every temple and palace throughout the Delta, after having witnessed the
erection of every one of them. If it had a tongue, it would, I think,
tell us that it was not the climate that had been the destroyer, but man.
The decree which the Emperor Theodosius issued at the instance of the
Archbishop and Christians of Alexandria, to authorize the destruction
of the great temple of Serapis in that city, shows what was probably
the cause of the first overthrow of the temples of the Delta. As long
as they stood, it was thought there would be priests to minister in
them, and worshippers to frequent them. And in those days of religious
faction-fights, we know that they were frequently used as fortresses.
We might say that the way to meet these difficulties was to trust to
the imperishableness of truth, and to the sure decay of falsehood; but
whatever we might do, we certainly should not destroy the historic
monuments of a glorious antiquity. They, however, had not our ideas on
these subjects; and, moreover, were blinded by the dust and smoke of the
battle that was raging around them; and so they acted on the principle
that was afterwards formulated to the north of the Tweed, that the way to
get rid of the rooks is to pull down the nests.
When the overthrow of a temple had been once effected, we may be quite
sure that all the limestone that could be found in it would be very soon
sent to the kiln. A great deal of lime is used in Egypt for walls, and
for plastering; and everywhere throughout the country, even in places
where the stone might be had for the quarrying, the Arab has preferred
the stones of old tombs and temples to the somewhat more costly process
of cutting what he wanted from the living rock. Mehemet Ali, while
constructing his paltry nitre-works at Karnak, although the mountain on
the opposite bank was of limestone, to get what of this material was
requisite for his purpose, destroyed one of the historic propylons within
the sacred enclosure. In the pyramid district, often with the limestone
under their feet and all around them, it has been the common practice
to calcine the, to us, precious sculptured and painted stones from the
tombs. And in this the modern Arab is only following the example of
the old Egyptian, and of all other people who wanted the materials of
unused buildings close at hand. We may, therefore, be sure that, a few
centuries after the overthrow of these temples of the Delta, all the
limestone that could be picked out of their ruins was consumed in this
way.
We have seen, however, that the chief material employed in the
construction of the grandest of them was not limestone, but granite. This
was utterly indestructible by the climate; and yet, in some places, it
has entirely vanished as completely as the limestone; and has in the rest
been much diminished. The same cause, I believe, has brought about the
disappearance of both. As was done with the limestone, so has it happened
to the granite: it has been used for whatever purposes it was adapted.
The smaller pieces, as may frequently be seen, have been carried off for
building material; and the larger pieces have been turned to account
in the way in which we find that fragments of the granite colossus of
Rameses the Great at Thebes have been employed, that is to say, as
millstones for grinding, and mortars for pounding corn. In the alluvial
Delta the old buildings were the only quarries.
All the phenomena of the case are thus accounted for. Every one must wish
that these imposing historic monuments of a great past had been preserved
to our times. We feel as if those who threw them down, and those who
afterwards employed their displaced, but still sacred, stones for their
own petty purposes, had done to ourselves, and to the civilized world,
an irreparable wrong. It may, however, mitigate our indignation, to
remember that the former acted under a misapprehension of the nature and
requirements of their cause; and that we ought not to be hard upon the
poor Arab for having done what popes and cardinals did, when, to build
palaces for themselves, they pulled down, with sacrilegious hands, the
monuments of old Rome.
This destruction of tombs and temples has in Egypt been going on always.
Of late years, indeed, there has been an increased demand for building
materials, in consequence of some portion of the Khedivé’s numerous loans
having been spent in public works, and in giving employment to a great
many people who have had to build houses for themselves: the work of
destruction, therefore, is now advancing at a greater rate than it ever
did before. Many can confirm this from their own observation. Every one
who revisits the country sees how rapidly and completely the stones of
newly-opened tombs have disappeared. He saw them a few years ago: now he
hears that they have been sent to the kiln.
CHAPTER XXIX.
POST-PHARAOHNIC TEMPLES IN UPPER EGYPT.
Cui bono?—CICERO.
The Ptolemaic temple of Edfou, unlike those of the Delta, has suffered
little from the injuries either of time, or of man. It is substantially,
both internally and externally, in the state in which it was two thousand
years ago, when the inhabitants of the great city of Apollo passed in
procession between its stately propylons, and entered its great court, to
hear hymns sung in praise of, and to witness offerings made to, the child
Horus, and the Egyptian Venus, or, as she is described in an inscription
on the walls, “the Queen of men and of women,” to whom the temple was
dedicated.
The external walls are complete, so are all the chambers, halls,
corridors, and courts within, even to the monolithic granite shrine.
The well, too, to which you descend by a flight of steps, is still full
of water. I seldom found a temple without its well. Many had lakes
also annexed to them for ornament, for the performance of religious
ceremonies, as that at Sais for the mysteries of Osiris, or for the boat
procession in the funeral function, as at Thebes; or, in addition to
these objects, to strengthen the defensive position of the temple. We
know that this was a purpose for which the temples were used: in fact,
each had its own trained and armed militia: and it is impossible to look
upon such a structure as this temple of Edfou without perceiving that the
idea of having a stronghold was included by the builder in his original
design. The height and massiveness of the surrounding wall were such
as to make either battery, or escalade, impossible, and there were no
apertures left in it by which entrance could be effected. In fact, the
temples gave the priests, and government, in every city an impregnable
citadel, and one against which no exception could be taken, however
strong it was made, for was it not all done for the glory of the gods
of the city? And so the people were tricked into assisting to forge
their own chains. Thoughts of this kind arise in your mind as you pass
through the courts and galleries, ascend the propylons, and walk upon
the roof of this magnificent fortress temple. Some of the sculptures on
the walls, representing a royal boat procession on the river, enable us
to picture to ourselves how the last of the Ptolemies, the Circe of the
Nile, appeared on these occasions. Here, too, is an inscription of much
interest, for it gives some account of several estates belonging to the
temple.
At Dendera the greater part of the work, and of the sculptures, belong to
the Roman period. The Egyptian architect now receives through the Roman
governor of the province, his instructions from, and reports back their
execution to, the banks of the Tiber. On the walls we read the names of
Augustus and of his four successors in the Empire, Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius, and Nero. On an older part of the structure occurs the name
of the Egyptian son of the greatest of the Cæsars, together with his
mother’s, the great Egyptian enchantress. In the Ptolemaic temple also
at the south-west angle of the enclosure at Karnak, both these names are
repeated several times. In each case the name is accompanied with what
is meant for a sculptured portrait of this famous lady. In the fulness
and roundness of the face there is some resemblance to the features with
which Guido embodies his idea of her in his celebrated picture. His
intuitive perception of refined and enduring voluptuousness has thus
proved true to nature.
But, though at Dendera the existing buildings are modern, dating from a
little before and after the Christian era, yet the site is as old as any
in Egypt. An inscription has been found by which we are informed that a
temple was completed on this spot by Apappus (that is to say, perhaps
three thousand years before Christ), which had been commenced three
or four hundred years previously by Cheops, the builder of the Great
Pyramid. (We may ask, by the way,—How does this agree with the legend
that he closed the temples?) And that eighteen hundred years after the
foundation of the temple by Cheops, that is one thousand five hundred
years before Christ, the structure which Apappus had completed was
reconstructed by Tuthmosis III.
At Esné is another of the great post-Pharaohnic temples of Upper Egypt.
What has been disinterred here belongs also to the Roman period. The list
of inscribed names includes Tiberius, Germanicus, Vespasian, Trajan,
Adrian, Antoninus, and Decius. The last is of the date 250 A.D., and
is the latest instance yet found of the name of a Roman emperor on an
Egyptian temple, inscribed in hieroglyphics. Here, too, has been found
the shield of Tuthmosis III. We may infer, therefore, that the work of
the Roman period now standing was placed, as at Dendera, upon the site
of a temple erected by this great Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty.
Perhaps, as the excavations here have not yet extended beyond what may be
regarded as merely the front of the temple, some of the older structure
may hereafter be brought to light from beneath the still undisturbed
mounds behind.
These three temples of Edfou, Dendera, and Esné, to which some others in
Upper Egypt may be added, are of great value historically. They enable
us to understand what was the condition of Egyptian art, and, to some
extent, in what condition the Egyptians themselves were in the Greek,
and in the Roman period. From the time of Menes to the time of Decius we
see that they possessed the same language, the same arts, the same style
of art, the same method of writing, the same mythology, and the same
social arrangements. The mind is almost overwhelmed at the contemplation
of such stability in human affairs. With this vast tract of time, spread
over four thousand years, we are acquainted historically. Of the period
that preceded it we have no monuments, and know nothing historically.
What we know, however, of the historical period enables us to infer
with confidence that the period which preceded it, and in which all
this knowledge, all these arts, and these aptitudes were acquired, this
mythology constructed, and this social organization, possessing so much
vitality and permanence, grew into form, and established itself, could
not possibly have been a short period.
The antiquity of the sites of Dendera and Esné, and perhaps also of
Edfou, must have contributed largely towards the eventual preservation
of their temples. When a temple had for some thousands of years been
standing on the same site, the surrounding city necessarily rose very
much above it. This rise would be more rapid in Upper Egypt than in the
Delta from merely natural causes, for the yearly deposit of soil is far
greater in that part of the valley which first receives the then heavily
mud-charged waters of the inundation. When, therefore, these cities were
overthrown or deserted, the deep depressions, in which the temples stood,
were soon filled from the rubbish of the closely surrounding mounds; and
the temples, thus buried, were preserved. Both at Dendera and Esné the
very roofs are below the level of the mounds, and nothing can be seen
till excavations have been made, in which the temples are found complete.
It was almost the same at Edfou also.
Wherever, too, the temples were constructed not of limestone, but of
sandstone, there was, in the comparative uselessness of their material,
another cause at work in favour of their preservation. Probably, however,
that which most effectually of all contributed to this result was the
circumstance that from the time when these temples were built, that is
to say, throughout the Greek, Roman, and Saracenic periods, the upper
country has never been prosperous, or made the seat of government. That
has always established itself in the Delta. It has been a consequence of
this that in Upper Egypt, that is in the district to which our attention
has been just directed, there has been little or no occasion for
building: it was not, therefore, worth while to pull down these temples
at the time they were standing clear, or to disinter them after they had
been buried in the rubbish heaps of the cities in which they had stood,
for the sake of the building materials they might have supplied.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE RATIONALE OF THE MONUMENTS.
Jamque opus exegi, quod non Jovis ira, nec ignes,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas;
... nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.—OVID.
It was for us a piece of great good fortune that the mighty Pharaohs
of old Egypt felt to an heroic, almost sublime, degree the narrow,
selfish, oriental desire to perpetuate their names, and the memory of
their greatness. Of course, this was connected very closely with the
traditional, primitive idea that great kings were not as other men.
They were of the materials of which gods had been made. Were they not,
indeed, already objects of worship to their subjects? Were they not
already received into the family of the gods? It is to these feelings
that we are indebted for the possession of one of the earliest—and not
least interesting—chapters in the records of our race. We have at this
day precisely what, four or five thousand years ago, they deliberately
contrived means for our having; and we have it all written in a fashion
which indicates, through the very characters used, much of the artistic
peculiarities, and even of the moral condition, and of the daily life,
of those who inscribed it. There is nothing in the history of mankind
which combines such magnitude, such far-reaching design, and such wise
provision of means for the purpose in view, crowned, as time has shown,
with such complete success. Some circumstances and accidents, such as the
climate of the country, the materials with which they had to work, and
the point the arts they had to employ had then reached, happily conspired
to aid them; but this does not deprive them of the credit of having
turned everything they used to the best account with the utmost skill,
and the most long-sighted sagacity.
The question they proposed to themselves was—How the memory of their
greatness, and of their achievements, might be preserved eternally. There
was the method we know was practised by the Assyrians, the Persians, and
the Hebrews. They might have caused to be recorded what they pleased
in chronicles of their reigns, written in whatever was the ordinary
character, and on whatever were the ordinary materials. There can be
little doubt but that this was done. Such records, however, did not
give sufficient promise of the eternity they desired. All materials for
writing were perishable. Great national overthrows might occur, and
all written documents might be destroyed. The language in which they
were written might change, and even the memory of it die out. Written
documents, too, in order that the record might be preserved, must be
transcribed. Here were opportunities for omissions and alterations.
These objections were conclusive against trusting exclusively to written
documents. We can now see that if the old Pharaohs had relied only on
such records as these, very little would at this day be known about them,
or ancient Egypt. What we now know would have occurred, fully justifies
their prescience: just as well as we know now, after the event, what
would have been, they knew, before the event, what would be.
They, therefore, devised another method—that both of inscribing, and of
sculpturing, on stone what they had to record. This was a material which
might be so used as to be practically imperishable. What was written on
this would not require to be rewritten from time to time. The work might
be so done as to bid fair to survive national overthrows. It might be
read by any man’s eyes, although the language of Egypt might be lost. The
sculptures, at all events, would be partially understood.
But in order to secure the advantages which might be found in the
adoption of this method, certain conditions were necessary, a want of
foresight, or neglect of which would render the attempt futile. The
building on which the records were to be engraved, and sculptured, must
be of such a size as to supply sufficient wall-space for the whole of
the chronicles of the king’s reign, and for all the scenes, religious or
secular, he might wish, from their connexion with himself, to depict and
perpetuate. This, it is obvious, would necessitate very large buildings.
They must, also, be so constructed as to be able to withstand all the
accidents, and adverse circumstances, to which they might, in the course
of ages, be exposed. No buildings that men had hitherto considered most
solid and magnificent would fulfil these conditions. They all in time,
from one cause or another, had become dilapidated. A double problem was
thus presented to them: first, how to get sufficient wall-space, and then
to get this sufficiency on buildings exempt from all the ordinary, and
even most of the extraordinary, chances of destruction. The first was
easily answered. The building—or if it be a tomb, the excavation—must
be enlarged to the required dimensions. The second was more difficult.
They answered it by the character they gave to the architecture. The
smaller the stones of which a building is constructed, the smaller its
chances of longevity: the larger its stones, the greater its chances. The
stones, for instance, might be so small, that any one who, in times when
the building might be deprived of all natural guardians, happened to want
such pieces, might carry them off on his donkey, or, if larger, on his
camel, to burn for lime, or to use for the walls of a house or enclosure.
Stones, even of considerable size, might easily be thrown down, and cut
up, to serve the purposes of those who could command the amount of labour
always at the disposal of any well-to-do person; but it was possible
to imagine stones used of so great a size that it would require such
expensive tackle, and so many hands, to throw them down, that it would
be as cheap, in most instances, to go directly to the quarry, and cut
out for one’s self what was wanted. It was, too, hoped that there would
be some indisposition to destroy such grand structures, for massiveness
appeals to the thought of even the most uninstructed. Now, this was just
what the Pharaohs of old Egypt foresaw, and acted on. They built with
stones, which could not be removed, except by those who could command
something like the amount of labour, machinery, and funds they themselves
employed in raising them, and who might find it profitable to employ
their resources in this way. The wisdom of the prevision was proved
when the Persians were in complete possession of the land, and in their
iconoclastic zeal, and hatred of the religion of Egypt, would, if they
could have readily managed it, not have left one stone upon another in
any temple throughout the Valley of the Nile.
This method of building also reduced to a minimum the number of joints.
This was, in more ways than one, a great gain. Many joints would have
interfered very materially with the sculptures and wall-writing; and to
have these in as perfect a form as possible was the great object. That
the masonry had many joints would also, sooner or later, have led to
the displacement of stones, which would have mutilated the record; and
eventually have brought about the ruin both of it, and of the building
itself. When we see how careful Egyptian architects were in making the
joints as fine as possible, so that the stones of a building are often
found to be as accurately fitted together as if it were jewellers’ work,
and not masonry; and when we observe that the further precaution is
sometimes taken of covering the joints of the roof with stone splines, in
order to minimize the corroding effects of air and wet, we may be sure
that they would be predisposed to adopt a style of building, which would
very much reduce the number of joints.
The thoughts and motives I have been attributing to these old builders
will account for another fact, that needs explanation. The ancient
Egyptians were familiar with the principle, and use of the arch. We find
in the temple-palace of the great Rameses a crude brick arch, every
brick of which contains his name. On the same grounds we must assign
another brick arch in this neighbourhood to Amunoph, one of the great
builders of the preceding dynasty. There are, too, frequent instances
of it in tombs of a still earlier date; but we do not find it in their
grand structures. There is no difficulty in divining the reason. It was
unsuitable to the purpose they had in view. For the reasons I have given
they had decided on using enormous blocks of stone. Arches thus heavily
loaded would have been subject to unequal subsidence, which would have
been derangement—probably, destruction—to them; and they knew that the
arch, in consequence of the lateral thrust, is a form of construction
that never sleeps. Hence their conception and formation of a style—for
they did not borrow it—which was confined to horizontal and perpendicular
lines.
That it was their intention to use their walls for historical and
descriptive sculptures and writing, precisely in the same way in which we
use a canvas for a picture, or a sheet of paper for writing, or printing,
is undoubted, because every square foot of space of this kind they had
created, in the great buildings they erected, is invariably used in
this way. And that this, and the other motives I have assigned, decided
them in employing such enormous blocks of stone, is equally undoubted,
because they are obvious reasons, and no other reason can be imagined
for inducing them to go to so much expense. The size of the building was
decided by the amount of wall-space they required for the records they
wished to place upon it; and the size of the stones by their estimate of
what would be sufficient to ensure their record against the destroying
hand, both of time and of man. Had the arts of printing, and of making
cheap durable materials to print upon, been known in those days, these
monuments would never have been constructed: the motive would have been
wanting.
Two methods were used for presenting the record to the eye,
hieroglyphical writing and sculpture. Here, again, the idea that
originated the monument is manifested. Those who could not understand
the writing would be able to understand, at all events, the sculptures.
The time might come when none would understand the writing, then the
sculptures might still be depended on confidently for supplying the
desired record. If the object was any other than that of securing an
eternal record, why adopt these two methods? If it had been merely
decoration that was in their thoughts, the sculptures would have been
enough.
The question has often been asked—Why the rock tombs of the kings, and of
others, were excavated to such a surprising extent? Their extent presents
so much difficulty to some minds, that one of our best known engineers,
who is also quite familiar with them, tells me that he cannot believe
but that they were originally merely stone quarries; and that the kings,
and sometimes wealthy subjects, finding them ready made, converted them
into tombs. We may, however, be quite sure that the Egyptians never
would have gone up into the mountains to the valley of the kings, to
quarry limestone in descending galleries, two or three hundred feet long,
when every step that they had taken for the previous two or three miles
had been over limestone equally good. Nor would they have made such
multitudes of quarries subterranean, and of precisely the dimensions
and character that fitted them for tombs. What, indeed, was the fashion
in which they worked their quarries, we see at Silsiléh, and elsewhere.
The true answer is that they made these sepulchral excavations of such
enormous extent for just the same reason that they constructed their
temples and palaces of such vast dimensions. They would not have answered
the purpose for which they were wanted had they been less. Wall-space was
required for recording all that an active prince in a long and eventful,
or prosperous, reign had done; and all that he wished to be known about
himself, his pursuits, his amusements, and his relations to the gods.
And just as, if it had been possible to put it all in print, a great
deal of paper would have been needed, so, when put in hieroglyphics and
sculptures, there was required a proportionate amount of wall-space. So
also with private individuals. If Petamenap could have written memoirs
of himself, and had a thousand copies struck off, and sent one to be
deposited in each of several great public libraries, he would have been
content with less than three-quarters of a mile of wall-space in his
tomb. Under the circumstances, then, what we find is just what we might
have expected. There is nothing wonderful, considering the motive, in
the extent of these excavations. The excavated tombs of Jews, Edomites,
Greeks, Etruscans, and many other people were not larger than was
necessary for the becoming interment of the corpse. If the Egyptians had
had only the same object, and no other, their excavations would have been
of the same size.
Of course the idea of suggesting the greatness of the gods by the
greatness of the houses that had been built for them, and of regarding
the temple as an offering, which became worthy of its object in
proportion to its vastness and costliness, could not have been wanting
in Egypt. Nor could there have been wanting among the priest class
the additional idea that the greatness of the temple is reflected on
those who minister in, and direct its services. All this may be readily
acknowledged; still such ideas will not justify, or account for the
unusual dimensions of these temples, or for the still more unusual
dimensions of the stones of which they are constructed. Everything has a
reason. And in an especial degree must particulars of this kind, which
involved so great an expenditure of time and labour, have had a distinct
and sufficient reason; and that could have been no other than the one I
have assigned for them. Of course, the vast dimensions of the rock-tombs
must be considered in conjunction with the vast dimensions of the
temples. What made the rock-tombs of Egypt larger than other rock-tombs
made the temples of Egypt larger than other temples: and that was the
desire of their excavators and builders to secure a vast expanse of
wall-space fit for such mural sculptures, paintings, and inscriptions as
we now find upon them.
The obelisks, also, come under the same category. They were books,
on which were inscribed the particulars those who set them up wished
them to record. Herodotus mentions that stelæ and figures, both with
inscriptions, were set up by Sesostris (Sethos and Rameses in one)
in Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhere. The object in view here also
was, of course, mainly to have something to write upon. Where the
commander-in-chief of a modern army would use a gazette, or posters, for
his manifestoes, Sesostris inscribed what he had to say to the people of
the country on the face of a rock, or upon a statue of himself he had set
for that purpose.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE WISDOM OF EGYPT, AND ITS FALL.
So work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule of nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.—SHAKSPEARE.
As day after day we wander about on the historic sites of old Egypt,
among the temples and tombs, and endeavour to comprehend their magnitude
and costliness, the thought and labour bestowed on their construction,
and the ideas and sentiments embodied and expressed in the structures
themselves, and in the sculptures placed upon them, we are brought to
understand that never in any country has religion been so magnificently
maintained. Israel had but its single temple; here, however, every city
of the land—and no land had a greater number of great cities—had erected
a temple, and often more than one, which was intended not so much for
time as for eternity. One third of the land of Egypt was devoted to the
support of the priesthood. The payments also made by the people for the
services of religion must have amounted to large yearly aggregates.
The spoils of Asia and Africa were, as well as the royal revenues,
appropriated, in a large proportion, to religious purposes. Pharaoh
was himself a priest, and his palace was a temple. Both law, as then
understood, and commerce, as then carried on, were outworks and supports
of religion. The sacred books, in which everything that was established
and taught was contained, had the sanction of heaven. And the religion
the people professed was not around them and before them only: it was
also in their hearts. Their motives were drawn from it, their actions
had reference to it, and their whole life was framed upon it. It had
inspired literature, created art, organized and legislated for society,
made commerce possible, and built up an empire; and no form of religion
had or, we may add, has ever, for so long a period of time, made men what
they were; for, from the time of Menes, at least, to that of Decius, it
had been doing this work.
At last a day came when life suddenly left the organism—for religion is
an organism of thought. It was dissolved into its primal elements; and a
new organism having been constructed out of them in combination with some
other elements recently accrued, the new took the place of the old. That
so much had been said and done on its behalf and in its name; that it had
borne so much good fruit; that it had had so grand an history; that it
had been believed in, and been the source of the higher life to a great
people for so many thousand years, were all powerless to save it.
But here the Muse of History whispers to us that it is not enough that
we have seen in the monuments the evidence of the existence, of the
greatness, and of the overthrow of this religion, but that we must also
endeavour to make out what it was that had maintained it, and what it was
that overthrew it; and then what are the lessons its maintenance and its
overthrow contain for ourselves.
It is useless to turn to the history of Egypt, or of any other country,
merely to satisfy an empty curiosity or to feed a barren—and often a
mischievous—love of the marvellous. The legitimate aim, and—if it be
reached—the precious fruit of such studies, is to enable ourselves to
make out the path along which some portion of mankind travelled to the
point it reached, and to see how it fared with them by the way; what
hindered, and what promoted, their advance; to ascertain what they did,
how they did it, and what effects the doing of it had: and all this in
order that haply thereby some serviceable light may be thrown on our own
path and position. This is the only way in which we can properly either
form opinions, or review the grounds of opinions already formed, on many
subjects in which we are most concerned: for these are subjects with
respect to which the roots of opinion are for us laid in history.
First then—What was the cause of this long life, this stability of the
religion of Egypt? The primary cause was that, as we have seen, it was
thoroughly in harmony with the circumstances and conditions of the
Egypt of its time. It had thoroughly and comprehensively grasped those
circumstances and conditions. It had, with a wise simplicity, interpreted
them, and adapted itself to them. But that was not all. In a manner
possible at that time it had made itself the polity and the social life,
as well as the religion, of the nation; and having done this—that is,
having absorbed and taken up into itself every element of power—it gave
to itself a fixed and immutable form. The physical characteristics, too,
of the country, while, as we have seen, they made despotism inevitable
in the political order, could not have been favourable to any kind of
intellectual liberty. Thenceforth, all fermentation, or disposition to
change, in political and social matters, and too in manners and customs,
and even in art and thought, became impossible: for all these things go
together. The natural condition, therefore, of Egypt became one of fixity
and equilibrium: there was no tendency to move from the _status quo_, or
even to do anything in a way different from that, in which men had done
it, or to feel in a manner different from that, in which men had felt
for, at least, four thousand years. What were now the instincts of the
people were all in the opposite direction. It appeared as if Egypt had
never been young, and could never become old; as if it had never had a
beginning, and could never have an end. Time could not touch it. Society
worked with the regularity of the sun and of the river.
This will show us, too, why it did not spread. This religion, and this
system, which were so admirably adapted to the existing conditions and
natural circumstances of Egypt, were not adapted to the conditions
and circumstances of other countries. If the world had been composed,
physically and morally, only of so many possible Egypts, so that the
discovery of new regions might have issued only in the addition of new
Egypts to those already known, then the temples of Abydos, Memphis,
Heliopolis, and Karnak would still be crowded with the devout worshippers
of the gods of old Egypt, and so would the temples of thousands of other
cities. The ideas in the minds of these worshippers would still be the
ideas which had existed in the minds of Sethos and Rameses, and the
Egyptians of their day—neither better nor worse—and they would have been
propagated, and would continue to be propagated, to the other Egypts of
the world. But, fortunately, the world is not a repetition of Egypts,
nor of anything else; and so an insuperable barrier existed, in the very
nature of things, to prevent the outflow of Egyptianism into other lands.
But what was it that overthrew it in its own home, where it was so
strong? We may infer that it will probably be something, not that was
spontaneously generated within, but that came from without. And so it
was. But what was that something? It was not force. That the Persians had
tried, and it had been powerless. Nor could the dominion of foreign laws
and customs at the summit of society overthrow it: that has, elsewhere,
sapped and undermined domestic institutions; but in Egypt it, too, was
powerless, as was demonstrated by ages of Greek and Roman rule.
Nor did the religion of old Egypt fall because it had aimed in a wrong
direction. By their religion I mean their philosophy of the whole,
their purposed organization of the entire domain of experience, and
observation, and thought, including in its range the invisible as well
as the visible world. Its object had been the moral improvement of man.
Though, of course, from this statement some very damaging deductions must
be made; for it had not aimed equally at the moral improvement of all,
that is to say, of every man because he was a man. It had failed here
because it had had another co-ordinate aim, necessary for those times:
the maintenance of the social, intellectual, and material advantages of
a part of the community at the expense of the rest. This was, though
necessary, immoral or, at all events, demoralizing. Still, however, it
made the present only a preparation for the higher and the better life.
The things that are now seen it regarded as the ladder, by which man
mounts to the things that are not yet seen, which alone are eternal
realities. Of these aims and doctrines of the religion every man’s
understanding and conscience approved. Without this approval the religion
could not have maintained itself.
Neither did it fall because the civilization of Egypt had at last, after
so many thousands of years, worn itself out. There were no symptoms of
the life within it having become enfeebled through time, or from anything
time had brought. The propylons, the enclosing wall, the monolithic
granite shrine, the mighty roof-stones, the sculptures of the Ptolemaic
Temple of Edfou, and the massive monolithic granite shaft of the pillar
raised at Alexandria to the honour of Diocletian, prove that, down to the
last days of this long period, they could handle, as deftly as ever their
forefathers had done, masses of stone so ponderous that to look at them
shortens our breathing; and which they sculptured and polished in the
same way as of old. The priests who explained the sculptures of Thebes
to Germanicus were lineally the descendants of those who had formed the
aristocracy, and had supplied the magistracy, and the governing body
of Thebes, and of Egypt, under Rameses the Great, under Cheops, under
Menes. Nor can we suppose that any such amount of moral, or intellectual
degeneration had been brought about, as might not easily have been
recovered by the restitution of the old conditions of the country. The
Egyptian system, which left so little to the individual, seemed to
provide, just as they had taken care that their great buildings should,
against whatever contingencies might arise. It still had in itself the
capacity for rising, Phœnix-like, into new life.
So would it have been had Egypt been able to maintain its old insulation.
The day, however, for that had gone by. It now formed a part of the
general system of the civilized world; and, looking at it in its
relations to other people, we discover in it elements of weakness,
immorality, and effeteness; and these precisely it was that, under the
then existing circumstances, caused its fall. The state of things that
had arisen could have had no existence during the four thousand years, or
more, it had passed through. What that state of things was, and how it
acted, is what we have now to make out distinctly to our thoughts.
If the mind of man had been incapable of advancing to other ideas, and
the heart of man incapable of higher moral sentiments, than the ideas and
sentiments that had been in the minds and hearts of Sethos and Rameses,
and the Egyptians of their day, then all things would have continued as
they had been. But such has not been, is not, and, we may suppose, will
never be, the condition of man on this earth. Ideas and sentiments are
powers—the greatest powers among men. And there were ideas and sentiments
yet to come which were higher generalizations than those of old Egypt,
and which, therefore, were instinct with greater power. Knowledge, and
corresponding moral sentiments, had been the power of old Egypt, but
now they were to be confronted by profounder knowledge, and more potent
moral sentiments. The Egyptians, however, had put themselves into such a
position that they could not add the new light to the old, or graft the
scion of the improved vine upon the old stock. The only result, then,
that was possible was that that which was stronger and better must sweep
away that which was not so strong or so good, and take its place. It must
be a case, not of amalgamation, but of substitution.
The old Egyptians, in order to perpetuate, and render available their
knowledge, and to bring out immediately, and fully, its working power,
had swathed both it, and society, in bands of iron. In doing this they
had seen clearly what they wanted, and how to produce it. They knew that
morality only could make and maintain a nation; and that within certain
limits morality could be created, and shaped, and made instinctive. They
knew precisely what morality they wanted for their particular purpose,
and how they were to create this, and shape it, and how they were to make
it instinctive. In this supreme matter they did everything they wanted to
do. This, this precisely, and nothing else, was the wisdom of Egypt.[8]
It was the greatest wisdom any nation has ever yet shown. It took in hand
every individual in the whole community, and made him what it was wished
and needed that he should be. If we do not understand these statements
the wisdom of Egypt is to us a mere empty phrase. If we do understand
them, the phrase conveys to us the profoundest lesson history can teach;
and at the present juncture, when the foundations of social order are
being shifted, a transference of political power taking place, new
principles being introduced, and old ones being applied in a new fashion,
and in larger measures, it is, of all the lessons that can be found in
the pages of history, the one that would be of most service to ourselves.
They knew that they could make the morality they required instinctive.
If they could not have done this the whole business would have been with
them, as it proved with so many other people, a more or less well-meant,
but still only a melancholy _fiasco_. They did, however, thoroughly
succeed in their great attempt, and this is what we have now to look into.
First we must get hold of the fact that morality is instinctive. The
moral sentiments are instincts engendered in our suitably prepared
physical and mental organization by the circumstances and conditions of
the life of the community; this is the spontaneous self-acting cause;
and then, secondarily,—this, however, has ultimately the same source and
origination—by the deliberate and purposed arrangements established by
governing mind, that is, by laws and religion, the formal embodiments
of that mind. They are instincts precisely in the sense in which we
apply the word to certain physio-psychal phenomena of the lower animals.
They are formed among mankind in the same way, with, as we have just
said, the additional cause of the foreseen and intended action of those
regulations, which are suggested by the working of human societies, and
which are devised, and designedly introduced, by an exercise of the
reasoning faculties. They are transmitted in the same way, act in the
same way, and are modified, extinguished, and reversed in the same way.
Whatever, for instance, may be predicated of the maternal instinct in a
hen may be predicated of the maternal sentiment in the human mother, and
vice versâ, due allowance having been made for modifying conditions, for
there are other instincts in the human mother, (for instance, that of
shame at the dread of the discovery of a lapse from virtue,) which may
enable her to overpower and extinguish the maternal sentiment—a state to
which the hen, through the absence of other counteracting instincts, and
from defects of reason, can never be brought. This is true of all the
moral sentiments from the bottom to the top of the scale. The necessities
of human life, and chiefly the working of human society, have originated
every one of them. This accounts for every phenomenon belonging to them
that men have observed and commented on, and endeavoured to explain; as,
for instance, for their endless diversity, and yet for their substantial
identity; for their universality; for their apparent foundation in
utility; for their apparent origination in the will of the Creator; for
their apparent innateness; and for their apparent non-innateness. They
are diverse, they are identical, they are universal, they are founded
on utility, they originate in the will of the Creator, they are innate,
they are non-innate, in the sense in which instincts generated by the
necessities of human life, and the working of human societies (everywhere
endlessly modified by times and circumstances, yet substantially the
same), must possess every one of these qualities. A volume might be
written on the enlargement and proof of this statement. The foregoing
paragraph will, however, I trust, make my meaning sufficiently clear.
By an instinct I mean an impulse, apparently spontaneous and involuntary,
and not the result of a process of reasoning at the time, disposing one
to feel and act in a certain regular manner. Observation and experience
have taught us that dispositions of this kind in any individual may have
been either created in himself, or received transmissively from his
parents, having in the latter case been congenital. On the ground of this
distinction instincts may be divided into the two classes of those which
have been acquired, which are generally called habits, and of those that
have been inherited, which are generally called instincts. This division,
however, has respect only to that which is unessential and accidental,
because that which brings any feeling, or act, into either class is that
it originated in an impulse that arises, on every occasion that properly
requires its aid, regularly, and without any apparent process, or effort,
of reason. It is founded on an apparent difference in origination, but
primarily the origination in both members of the division must have been
the same. In this particular these moral conditions may be illustrated
by an incident, or accident, of the property men have in things; an
estate is not the less property because its possessor acquired it, nor
is another the more so because he inherited it from his predecessors.
And just as we distinguish between the unessential circumstances that
a property has been acquired by a self-made man, or that it has been
inherited, so do we between these two divisions of instinct. It is,
however, clear that a habit is merely an acquired instinct, and an
instinct an inherited habit. That the thing spoken of should be habitual,
that it originated in a certain regular impulse, and not in a conscious
exercise of the reasoning faculties at the time; and that the impulse
to which it is attributable arises regularly whenever required, and
produces, on like occasions, like acts and feelings, are the essential
points.
How the dispositions were acquired in cases where they are not
hereditary, though a most interesting and important inquiry, and one upon
which the old Egyptians would have had a great deal to tell us, is not
material to the point now before us. In whatever way the dispositions
may have been acquired, the feelings and acts resulting from them are
instinctive. As a matter of fact, instincts may be acquired in many
ways, as, for instance, through the action of fear, hope, law, religion,
training, and even of imitation. A generalization which would include
far the greater part of these causes is one I have already frequently
used—that of the working of society. Perhaps still more of them may be
summed up in the one word knowledge. What a man knows is always present
to him, and always putting constraint upon him, disposing him to act in
one definite way, conformably to itself, and regularly, instead of in any
one of ten thousand other possible ways. This, sooner or later, issues
in the habit which is inchoate instinct, and at last in the instinct
which is hereditary habit. The hereditary habit, however, is still
reversible.
It was just because the Egyptians observed a multitude of these social,
family, and self-regarding instincts in the lower animals, who possessed
each those necessary for itself, without the aid of speech or law, or
other human manifestations of reason, that they made them the symbols of
the attributes of divinity.
That they had designedly studied the whole of this subject of instinct
carefully and profoundly, and that their study of it had been most
successful and fruitful, are as evident to us at this day as that they
built the Pyramids and Karnak. We see the attractiveness the study had
for them in the fact that they had trained cats to retrieve wounded
water-fowl, and lions to accompany their kings in war, and assist them
in the chase; and that they recorded in their sculptures and paintings
that they had thus triumphed over nature, obliterating her strongest
instincts, and implanting in their place what they pleased. This tells
us, as distinctly as words could, the interest they took in the subject,
and the importance they attached to it; and that they had formulated the
two ideas, first that instincts can be created and reversed, and then
that everything depends upon them. All this had been consciously thought
out, and worked out by them; and was as clear to their minds as the
axioms of political economy are to our modern economists.
The Egyptians then deliberately undertook to make instinctive a sense
of social order, and of submission to what was established, and a
disposition to comply with all the ordinary duties of morality as then
understood, and which were set forth in the forty-two denials of sin the
mummy would have to make at the day of judgment. All this they effected
chiefly by their system of castes; and by the logical and practical
manner in which they had worked out, and constructed, their doctrine of
the future life; and had brought it to bear on the conduct, the thoughts,
and the sentiments of every member of the community: and they effected it
most thoroughly and successfully.
And now we must advance a step further, and note some of the incidents
that belonged to, and consequences that ensued on, what they did. We
must bear in mind that their times were not as our times. The means they
had to work with, the materials they had to work upon, and the manner in
which they were obliged to deal with their means and their materials,
necessitated the construction of an inelastic and iron system. This was
necessary then and there. Like all the oriental systems, it altered not,
and could not alter; and being thus inexpansive and unaccommodating, it
besides, in its institution of castes, involved injustice at home; and,
in its being for Egyptians alone, exclusiveness towards the rest of the
world, which was, in a sense, the denial of the humanity of all who were
not Egyptians. Being settled once for all, it abrogated human freedom. It
rejected and excluded all additional light and knowledge; it denied all
truth, excepting that to which it had itself already attained: that is
to say, however good it may have been for its own time, it eventually,
when brought into contact with a differently circumstanced, and advancing
world, made immorality, injustice, falsehood, thraldom of every kind,
and ignorance, essential parts of religion. This it was that caused its
overthrow.
Let us separate from the list just given of the elements of its eventual
weakness, one which was peculiar to those early times, and the history
of which is very distinct and interesting: it is that of national
exclusiveness. We can see clearly enough how this instinct of repulsion
arose. Those were times when the difficulties in the way of forming a
nation were great. Tribes and cities that had always been hostile to
one another, and populations composed of conquerors and the conquered,
were the materials that had to be compacted in a homogeneous body,
animated by one soul. Not cementing, but the most violently dissevering,
traditions alone exist. No community of interests is felt. The instincts
of submission to law have not been formed; every man is for doing what is
right in his own eyes, or at most in the eyes of the few, who feel and
think as he does. Communications are difficult. A common literature does
not exist to inspire common sentiments. It seems almost impossible, under
such circumstances, out of such elements, to form a nation: but unless
this be done, all good perishes. On no other condition can anything good
be maintained. This is the one indispensable condition. Here, then, is a
case in which the feeling of exclusiveness, if it can be created, will
go very far towards bringing about what is needed. It can bind together;
it is the sentiment of sundering difference from others, the corollary
to which is the sentiment of closest unity among themselves. It is then
good and desirable: it must by all means be engendered and cherished.
The governing and organizing mind of the community sees this. Efforts
therefore are made to establish it as a national instinct.
In Egypt these efforts were made with complete success. At first Egypt
had been a region of independent cities: the instincts that had arisen
out of that state of things had to be obliterated. A feeling also of
intense dislike to their Hyksos neighbours had to be created. All this
was done. They were brought to feel that they were a peculiar people,
separate from the rest of the world. That they were not as other people.
They had no fellow-feeling towards them. They shrank from them. They
hated them. It was quite agreeable to their feelings to ravage, to spoil,
to oppress, to put to the sword, to degrade, to insult, to inflict the
most cruel sufferings on, to make slaves of, to sacrifice to their
gods, those who were not Egyptians. This moral sentiment—in us it would
be destructive of morality—had originated in, and been fed by, their
circumstances; and had been shaped and strengthened by their institutions
deliberately designed for this purpose. It had become habitual. It was,
taking the word literally, an Egyptian instinct. We can imagine a very
different condition of the moral atmosphere of the world: such, indeed,
as it is about ourselves in the Europe of the present day. The sentiment
of nationality has everywhere been formed. It can maintain itself without
any assistance. What is needed is not something that will separate
peoples, but something that will bring them to act together. The instinct
of exclusiveness, of repulsion, will lead only to troubles, to hostile
tariffs, to wars. No good, but only evil, can come of it. Whatever will
promote friendliness and intercourse, and prevent their interruption,
must be cherished. The old instinct of exclusiveness has now become a
mistake, an anachronism, a nuisance, a sin. Everybody sees that what is
wanted is the sentiment of universal brotherhood. This, therefore, in its
turn, comes to be generally understood, and to some extent to be acted
on. That is to say, a moral instinct has been reversed: the old one,
which did good service in its day, is dying out; and that which has come
to be needed, and so is superseding it, is its direct opposite.
And now we must follow this sentiment of national exclusiveness and
repulsion into the neighbouring country of Israel. There we find that it
had been quite as necessary, probably even more necessary than in Egypt.
It had been engendered by the same process, and for the same purpose.
Between these two peoples the feeling was reciprocated with more than its
normal intensity. Their history accounts for this. But now it was to be
abrogated in both, and its abrogation in Egypt was to come from Israel.
And what we have to do here is to note the steps by which this great
moral revolution was brought about.
Fifteen hundred years had passed since the night when the Hebrew bondman
had fled out of Egypt, or, as the Egyptian annals described the event,
had, at the command of the gods of Egypt, been ignominiously cast out of
the land. They had ordered his expulsion, so ran the record, because he
was the incurable victim, and the prolific source, of a foul leprosy.
This was the evil disease of Egypt that bondman never forgot. Those
fifteen hundred years, from the days of the making of the brick for which
no straw had been given, and from the building of Pithom and Ramses, had
been very chequered years. In that time the fugitive people had had to
pass through many a fiery furnace of affliction. Their old task-masters
had again, as others, too, had done, set their heel upon them.
During that long lapse of time what a stumbling-block to the Hebrew mind
must have been the good things of Egypt: its wealth, its splendour,
its power, its wisdom; even its abundance of corn and its fine linen:
all that this world could give given to the worshippers of cats and
crocodiles. Egypt must have occupied in the Hebrew mind much the same
place that is held in the minds of many of ourselves by the existence
of evil. It was a great fact, and a great mystery. Something which
could neither be denied, nor explained, which it is unpleasant to be
reminded of, and which had better be kept altogether out of the thoughts
of the simple. The Hebrew “was grieved at seeing the Egyptian in such
prosperity. He was in no peril of death. He was strong and lusty. He
came not into misfortune, neither was he plagued like other men. This
was why he was so holden with pride, and overwhelmed with cruelty. His
eyes swelled with fatness, and he did even as he lusted. He spake wicked
blasphemy against the Most High. He stretched forth his mouth unto the
heavens, and his tongue went through the world. The people fell before
him, and he sucked out from them no small advantage.” Such was the aspect
in which the prosperity of Egypt presented itself to the mind of the
Hebrew. “He sought to understand it, but it was too hard for him.” How
grand, then, how noble, and for us how absolutely beyond all price, is
the reiterated assertion of the Hebrew prophets, even in the worst and
darkest times of this long and trying period, of the ultimate triumph of
right; of a new heavens and a new earth, that is, of a time when mundane
societies would be animated by diviner principles; and, pre-eminently, by
those of universal inclusion and concord.
At last came a large instalment of what many preachers of righteousness
had anticipated, and had desired to see, but had not seen. That they had
anticipated it under such adverse circumstances, and had lived and died
in the faith of it, is one of the chief contributories to the historical
argument for natural morality. What they had anticipated came about,
however, in a manner and from a quarter of which they could have had
no foresight. Beyond the Great Sea in the distant West, a city, whose
name Isaiah could never have heard, and which was not even a name in
the days of Rameses, and for many centuries after his time, had grown
into an empire, in which had come to be included the whole civilized
world. All nations had been cast into this crucible, and were being
fused into one people. Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, were each of them
the children of a more ancient, and, in some respects, of a higher and
better civilization; but they, like all the rest, had been absorbed
into the world-embracing dominion, and were powerless within it, except
so far as ideas give power. Every people was now being brought face to
face with all other people, and into union and communion with them. The
way in which the religions of the world were thus made acquainted with
each other acted as a confutation of each in particular, or rather of
its external distinctive mythology. We can form no adequate conception
of what the effect must have been. They were all alike discredited. The
exclusiveness of each was confuted by the logic of facts. It was out of
this conjuncture of circumstances that arose the new idea and sentiment
of the brotherhood of mankind. What had hitherto everywhere obscured the
view of it was now falling into decay; and what must suggest it had been
established.
And no people had been so thoroughly disciplined for receiving this idea
as the Jews. They had been brought into closest contact with Egyptians,
Assyrians, Persians, and other oriental people; and it had been that
kind of contact which obliges men to understand what other people think.
And after they had received this hard schooling from their neighbours,
they had been brought into the same kind of contact with Greek thought.
They had been obliged to take into their consideration the knowledge,
and the ways of thinking, of the Greeks. They had even been to a great
extent compelled to learn their language. Some of the writers of the New
Testament, it is clear, had been taught Greek, just as we may be taught
French; and Homer, it is evident, had been the school-book employed in
teaching them the language. And now, together with all the rest of the
world, they had become members of the universal empire of Rome. All
this would have led to nothing except obliteration and absorption, as
it did elsewhere, if the Jews had been like other people. They were
incapable, however, of succumbing in this way, because they had ideas
and moral sentiments that were, in some important respects, truer, and
stronger, and better than those of their conquerors and oppressors. Hence
originated the idea of their conquerors that they were the enemies of the
human race. It was, then, for this reason, because, being indestructible
and unassimilable, they had been obliged to consider the meaning and
worth of other peoples’ ideas, and of facts, that Jerusalem came to
be the definite spot upon which the fruitful contact of the different
integers of the East with each other, and of East with West, of Europe
with Asia, actually took place. Here were collected, as into a focus, the
knowledge and the circumstances which would engender the new sentiment
that was to reverse the old one. The old one had been that of narrow
exclusiveness. It could not have been otherwise. The only one that could
be engendered by the new knowledge, and the new circumstances, was one
of universal inclusiveness: not the idea of a peculiar people, such as
the Egyptians had regarded themselves, but its very opposite, that of
the universal brotherhood of mankind. We see the embryo of the thought
endeavouring to assume form at Rome, at the very time that it was being
preached with the sharpest and clearest definition at Jerusalem. But
it never could have assumed its proper, clear, distinct form at Rome,
because morality would always there have been hazy and corrupt, and
inextricably entangled with ideas of self and dominion. In Jerusalem
only, the one true home of single-purposed morality, could it assume its
true shape, pure and undefiled. When the words were uttered, “Ye all are
brethren,” the idea was formulated. That was the moment of its birth.
It then took its place in the moral creation, a living form, with life,
and the power of giving life; with power to throw down and to build up.
This was the new commandment, the seminal idea of the new religion,
and Jerusalem was the seed-bed, prepared for it by the long series of
antecedent events, where it must germinate first. When that had been
done, scions from it might be taken to other localities. But it is plain
that, as moral instincts die hard, Jerusalem is also precisely one of the
spots in which the new sentiment will meet with the most determined and
violent antagonism; nor will it ever find there general reception, or,
indeed, so much reception as among other races, where the instinct of
repulsion had not been so completely and firmly established.
The new sentiment had to be evoked from man’s inner consciousness, as it
was acted upon and affected by the new order of things. This could not be
done until the authority of this inner consciousness had been recognized.
This means a great deal. What it had come to regard as true and good
was to be religion, as distinguished from written law, which is imposed
by the State, has convenience and expediency for its object, and is
limited in its purview by the necessities of its application, and by the
ignorance and low sentiment of public opinion. The Christ-enlightened,
God-taught, pure conscience is a better and higher and more searching
rule of life than any legislation. That would only drag conscience and
life down again to the common level. To make that religion would be
making Cæsar God: an evil necessity that had, to some extent, inhered in
the Old Dispensation. It would kill conscience, which aims higher, goes
deeper, and sees farther than written statutes and enactments, however
well meant, or wisely drawn. The new religion, therefore, stood aloof
from, and placed itself above, all existing legislation, except in the
sense of submitting to it, and obeying it as a social and political
necessity. But though it submitted itself to, and obeyed, it could
not receive, a written code as the rule of life. While, therefore, it
recognized the rights and necessities of the kingdoms of this world, it
found in man’s conscience the law of a kingdom not of this world. The
polity it created was not of them. It was God’s kingdom among men. The
kingdoms of the world might at some future time become the kingdoms of
God, but at present Cæsar and God were distinct powers, and represented
distinctly different applications of the principles of right. Cæsar’s
application was partial only, and, moreover, full of corruption; God’s
was all-embracing and incorrupt.
The day of trial had been long in coming, but it had come at last; and
what we have been recalling to the reader’s mind was what the wisdom of
Egypt had to confront now. It was the apotheosis of the ideas men could
now attach to the words, Truth, Freedom, Justice, Goodness, Knowledge,
Humanity. These were of God, and made man one with God. The time, then,
had come for the Hebrew bondman to be revenged: for the Hebrew invasion
of Egypt. We may contrast it with the old Egyptian invasions of Syria,
and with the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. It was of a kind of which the
organized wisdom of Egypt could have formed no anticipation; and against
which the temples and the priesthood of Egypt were as powerless as heaps
of stones, and dead men. It was an invasion of ideas which could now be
understood, and of sentiments which could now be felt; and which were
better than any the priests, and priest-kings of old Egypt had in their
day felt or understood; and the feeling and the understanding of which
would utterly abolish the system they had maintained. These ideas and
sentiments had been proclaimed in the cities and villages of Judea and
Galilee as the new commandment, as the fulfilment of all religion. The
whole Roman world was ripening for their reception. They were carried
down into Egypt in the thoughts and hearts of those who had received
them. They spread from mind to mind, and from heart to heart. The
fugitive bondman, the cast-out leper had returned; but he had now come to
bestow a glorious liberty, to communicate the contagion of regenerating
ideas and sentiments, and of a larger and better humanity. The Hyksos had
again come down into the old Nile land; but this time they came not to
oppress, not to exact tribute, but to break bonds, and to enrich, and to
place men on a higher level than they had occupied before. This was an
invasion to which Egypt, in all its thousands of years of national life,
had never yet been exposed. Invasions of this kind can be very rare in
the history of nations, and in the history of the human race; but if,
when they do come, minds are prepared for them, they are irresistible.
And so it was now with old Egypt. The old order of things passed away,
and the new order of things came in its place. The priesthood, with
all their lore, their science, their wisdom, their legitimacy of at
least four thousand years, their impregnable temple-fortresses, their
territorial supremacy, the awful authority with which a religion so old,
that the memory of the world ran not to the contrary, invested them,
passed away like a morning mist. The whole system fell, as the spreading
symmetrical pine-tree falls, never to burst forth again into new life—the
overthrow having killed the root, as well as all that had grown from the
root. Even the very Houses of the Gods which, as the thought of the days
of Rameses had phrased it, had been built for myriads of years, passed
away with it, excepting the few which have been preserved to tell the
history of what once had been.
All had been overthrown: but the Christian ideas and sentiments, which
had done the work, were too grand and simple for Egypt, where the most
inveterate of all instincts was for the mind to be swathed. And so the
new revelation was soon obscured. The reaction came in the forms of
asceticism and theology.
But asceticism and theology are not religion; or, at all events, not
such religion as can inspire much nobility of soul, or which has any
power and vitality, except under the circumstances which created it:
and so this, too, fell; and the religion which superseded it—that of
the Egypt of to-day—is, in its simplest expression, a reversion to the
old oriental idea, which seems always to have been a necessity there,
of authoritative, unchangeable legislation, combined, however, with the
Christian idea of the brotherhood of mankind. The form in which the
Christian idea has been incorporated into it is that of an universal
religion, which gives no sanction to exclusive pretensions, either of
nationality, or of caste.
It is natural for the traveller to wish that he could behold Egypt in
its old world order and glory; but he must console himself with the
reflection that what perished was what deserved to perish—what had become
narrow and false; and that what was good, true, and wise, including the
lessons Egypt’s history teaches, survived the crash. Of all that we are
the inheritors.
* * * * *
The fortunes and the future of the Christian idea and sentiment of the
brotherhood of mankind, which gave the new doctrine so much of its power
to overthrow the wisdom of old Egypt, interests and concerns us all. From
the days of its first triumphs down to our own day it has been actively
at work in Europe. Through all these centuries it has been gaining
strength. The first logical deduction from it which, like its parent,
becomes a sentiment as well as an idea, is that of universal equality,
for if all are brothers, then none is greater or less than another. The
flower with which this offshoot blossoms is that of humanity. Under the
old exclusive systems, which placed impassable barriers between peoples,
cities, and tribes; and then between the classes of the same community;
and had therefore, said to human hearts, ‘So far may you go, and no
further; beyond this you need not—you ought not—to feel pity; beyond
this hatred and repulsion, the sword, the torch, the chain are only to
be thought of;’ the idea of humanity had been impossible: but when all
men are recognized as in essentials equally men, that which makes them
men assumes the definite form of this idea. ‘Honour all men’—that is, do
all in your power to elevate every one you may come in contact with, and
nothing that has a tendency to degrade any human being, whatever may
be his complexion, blood, caste, or position—was, we know, a very early
injunction.
The greatest outward and visible achievement of the idea and sentiment
of the brotherhood of mankind was the abolition of slavery and serfdom.
This was effected very slowly. We are, however, rather surprised that so
Herculean a labour should ever have been achieved by it at all. When we
consider the inveteracy and the universality of the institution; that
it was the very foundation on which society was, almost everywhere,
built; that it was everywhere the interest of the governing part of the
community, that is, of those who had power in their hands, to maintain
it; that, in the early days of the new idea, it never soared so high as
the thought of so great an achievement; and yet find, notwithstanding,
that the old institution has fallen everywhere; that no combination of
circumstances has anywhere been able to secure it; we begin to understand
the irresistible force of the idea. This was the greatest of all
political and social revolutions ever effected in this world.
The manifestations of the sentiment we are now thinking of have been
very various, in conformity with the circumstances of the times, and the
condition of those in whom it was at work. Some centuries ago it came to
the surface in Jacqueries and Anabaptist vagaries. Now for some three
generations it has been seen in volcanic operation in French outbreaks
and revolutions. It is the soul of American democracy. It is at this
moment working, like leaven in a lump of dough, in the hearts and minds
of all Christian communities. There is no man in this country but feels
its disintegrating, and reconstructing force. Every village school that
is opened, every invention and discovery that is made, every book,
every newspaper that is printed, every sermon that is preached, aids
in propagating it. Its continued growth and spread gradually deprive
governing classes of heart, thus betraying them from within, and of a
logically defensive position in the forum of what has now come to be
recognized as public opinion. It is at this day the greatest power among
men. The future, whatever it is to be, must be largely shaped by it.
Here the study of the wisdom of old Egypt teaches us much. One most
useful lesson is that stability in human societies can be attained; but
that, as the constitution and sentiments of European societies are now
very different from the state of things to which the wisdom of Egypt
was applied, we must give to our efforts a form and character that will
be suitable to our altered circumstances. The method they adopted was
that of eliminating the elements of political and social change, by
arranging society in the iron frame of caste, and by petrifying all
knowledge in the form of immutable doctrine. We cannot do this, and
it would not be desirable for us to do it, if we could. The obvious
advantages of the Egyptian method were that, under the then existing
circumstances, it secured order and quiet; and that it assigned to
every man his work, and taught him how to do it. Its disadvantages were
that ultimately it repressed all higher moral progress, denied all new
truths, and consecrated what had become falsehood and injustice. It was
also worked, though with a great immediate gain of power, from thorough
organization, yet with a great waste of the highest form of power, for
it altogether overlooked natural aptitudes, and, quite irrespectively of
them, decided for every man what he was to be, and what he was to do.
We cannot suppose, on the one hand, that there are no other methods
of securing social order and stability than these; nor, on the other
hand, that American democracy and Chinese mandarinism have exhausted all
alternatives now possible. This, however, is a problem we shall have
to consider for ourselves. Here it will be enough for us to see that,
even if it were within our power to attain to stability by the Egyptian
application of the Egyptian method, the result would still be subject to
the limitation of the rise of new ideas, and even of the propagation,
more widely throughout the community, of existing ideas. These are
absolutely irresistible. There is nothing under heaven, especially in
these days of rapid and universal interchange and propagation of thought,
which can arrest their progress. Their elements pervade the moral
atmosphere, which acts on our moral being, just as the air, we cannot but
breathe, does on our bodily constitution.
We may also learn from this history that progress, about which there
has been so much debate—some glorying in it, some denying it,—is an
actual positive historic fact. What we have been reviewing enables us,
furthermore, to see precisely in what it consists. It does not consist
in the abundance of the things we possess, nor in mastery over nature.
We may continuously be overcoming more and more of the hindrances nature
has placed in our path; we may be compelling her to do more and more of
our bidding; we may be extorting from her more and more of her varied
and wondrous treasures; but all this, in itself, possesses no intrinsic
value. It is valuable only as a means to something else. The old Egypt of
the Pharaohs might, conceivably, have possessed railways, power-looms,
electric telegraphs, and yet the old Egyptian might have been, and might
have continued to be for four thousand years longer, very much what he
was in the days of Sethos and Rameses. The modern Egyptian possesses all
these things, and the printing-press besides, and yet is inferior, under
the same sky, and on the same ground, to his predecessors of those old
times. The end and purpose of material aids, and of material well-being,
are to strengthen, and to develop, that which is highest, and best, and
supreme in man—that which makes him man. Otherwise it is only pampering,
and rendering life easy to, so many more animals. The difference would
be little whether this were done for so many such men, or for so many
crocodiles and bulls. That which is supreme in man—which makes a man a
man—is his intellectual and moral being. If this has been strengthened,
enlarged, enriched, progress has been made; he has been raised to a
higher level; his horizon has been extended; he has been endued with new
power. History and observation show that without some amount of material
advancement, intellectual and moral advancement is not possible, and that
all material gains may be turned to account in this way. This is their
proper place—that of means, and not of ends. They are ever placing larger
and larger proportions of mankind in the position in which intellectual
and moral advancement becomes possible to them. That, then, to which they
contribute, and which they make possible, is their true use and purpose.
Whoever makes them for himself the end, dethrones that within himself,
the supremacy of which alone can make him a true man. Every one who has
done anything towards enriching, and purifying, and strengthening the
intellect, or the heart of man, or towards extending to an increased
proportion of the community the cultivation and development of moral and
intellectual power, has contributed towards human progress.
The greatest advance that has been made in the historic period was
the implanting in the minds of men the idea, and in their hearts the
sentiment, of the brotherhood of mankind. The idea and sentiment of
responsibility dates back beyond the ken of history. Our observation,
however, of what is passing in rude and simple communities, where social
arrangements and forces are still in an almost embryonic condition,
leads us to suppose that it is an instinct developed by the working,
the necessities, and the life of society. To our own times belongs
the scientific presentment of the idea of the cosmos, which, though a
construction of the intellect, affects us also morally. Who can believe
that even the oldest of these ideas is bearing all the fruit of which it
is capable, and—that it will have no account to give of even better fruit
in the future than it has ever produced in the past? How wide then is
the field, in the most advanced communities, for moral and intellectual,
the only truly human, progress! How impossible is it to foresee any
termination of this progress!
CHAPTER XXXII.
EGYPTIAN LANDLORDISM.
Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new?
It hath been already of old time which was before us.—ECCLES.
Landlordism, or the territorial system, which gives, generally throughout
a country, the ownership of the land to one class, and the cultivation
of it to another, who pay rent for it, is often spoken of as something
peculiarly English. We hear it said that this divorce of ownership
from cultivation is unnatural. That it is bad economically, and worse
politically. That attachment to the land, the great element of stability
in political institutions, hardly exists under it. On the other side
it is urged that it is a great advantage to a community to possess in
its bosom a large class, far removed from the necessity of working for
its support, which is, therefore, better able to set to other classes
an example of refinement, and of honourable bearing; and of which many
members will naturally desire to devote themselves to the service of
the state, and of their respective neighbourhoods. We argue the point,
as if the landlordism of England were almost something _sui generis_.
This is a mistake. The same system was developed, only more designedly
and methodically, throughout Egypt more than three thousand years ago.
There the whole acreage of the country was divided into rectangular
estates. One third of these was assigned to the king, and the remaining
two thirds, in equal proportions, to the priestly, and to the military
castes. These estates were generally cultivated by another order of men,
who, for the use of the land, paid rent to the owners.
It is a curious fact, that the Egyptian farmer paid the same
proportionate rent which is paid by the British farmer of the present
day. Rent in Egypt three thousand years ago, was one fifth of the gross
produce. The circumstances of Egypt, of course, almost exclude the idea
of average land, for any one acre anywhere was likely to be as good as
any other acre anywhere else, all being fluviatile alluvium similarly
compounded. And all were subject to much the same atmospheric conditions.
There could therefore be the same rent for the whole kingdom. But if
the land did anywhere, from some exceptional cause, produce more or
less, this was met by the system of paying a fifth. With respect to this
country, however, we must talk of averages. The average gross produce
of average farms is here, I suppose, estimated in money, about eight
pounds an acre; and the average rent of such a farm is about thirty-two
shillings an acre. Just one fifth. Exactly the proportion that was paid,
as rent for the land they occupied, by the tenants of Potiphar, Captain
of the Guard, and of Potipherah, Priest of On, Joseph’s father-in-law.
The same rent was paid by the occupiers of the farms on the royal demesne
to Pharaoh himself.
It may also be worth while noticing how similar circumstances produced in
those remote times, and produce in our own, similar tastes and manners.
Those old Egyptian landlords were not altogether unlike their English
representatives. There are traces in them of a family likeness. They were
much addicted to field-sports. You see this everywhere in the sculptures
and paintings. You find there plenty of scenes of fowling, fishing, and
hunting; of running down the gazelle, and spearing the hippopotamus; of
coursing and netting hares; and of shooting wild cattle with arrows, and
of catching them with the lasso. They had their fish-ponds as well as
their game-preserves. They had, too, their game laws. They were fond of
dogs and of horses. They kept very good tables. They gave morning and
evening parties. They amused themselves with games of skill and chance.
They thought a great deal of their ancestors, as well they might, for a
thousand years went but for little in the date of the patents of their
nobility. They built fine houses, and furnished them handsomely. They
paid great attention to horticulture and arboriculture.
If the estates in Egypt were all of the same size as the military
allotments mentioned by Herodotus, and the probability is that they were,
they must have been about ten acres each. This may be reckoned as fully
equal to thirty acres here; for in Egypt the land is all of the best
description, and is manured every year by the inundation; and two crops
at least can every year be secured from it, the cultivation being almost
like that of a garden under irrigation. This would be ample for those
who cultivated their land themselves. Those who let it for a fifth would
of course get that proportion of every crop. The man therefore who had
forty-two estates, as we find it recorded of an old Egyptian on his tomb,
had a very considerable income. It would be interesting to know how he
came to acquire so many estates; whether by inheritance, by purchase,
or by favour of the Crown; whether there were any statutory limits to
the acquisition of landed property; and whether provisions were made for
dispersing a man’s accumulations at his death: for instance, supposing he
had received several estates from the Crown, was he merely a life-tenant
without power of absolute disposal, the estates reverting at his death to
the Crown? What was the rule of distribution generally followed in their
wills? How was the property of an Egyptian, who died intestate, disposed
of?
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CASTE.
Ne sutor ultra crepidam.
In old Egypt, where we find the earliest development of Aryan
civilization, every occupation was hereditary. In the United States,
where we have its most recent development, no occupation is hereditary.
In Egypt a man’s ancestors from everlasting had practised, and his
descendants to everlasting would have to practise, the same business as
himself. In the United States it is a common occurrence for the same man
to have practised in succession several businesses.
With respect to ourselves, it is a trite remark that in this country
legislation is the only work that is designedly made hereditary. It
is, however, obvious that this is an instance which is subject to
considerable limitations, both as to its hereditary character, and as to
its actual extent. For our legislator caste is always receiving into its
ranks recruits from outside, and its legislative power is only a power
that is exercised co-ordinately with that of an unhereditary chamber.
Circumstances, not positive institution, except indirectly, have hitherto
made our agricultural labourers very much of a caste. Those who are
engaged in this kind of work are generally descended from those who have
for many generations been so employed. Multitudes of the class, however,
escape from it; and every village school that is at work amongst us is
supplying means of escape from it for many of those whose horizon it
enlarges.
The clergy of the Established Church to a great extent form a caste,
but without hereditary succession. This caste character of the clergy
is a result of their segregation from secular employments, and of their
corporate perpetuity.
Serfdom had, in mediæval Europe, a similar effect, which was, at the
same period, felt at the other extremity also of society, through the
institution of feudal nobility.
But the most widely-spread form of the institution was that which
now appears to us the most hideous of all human institutions, that
of slavery. Still we cannot pronounce it unnatural, for we find it,
at certain stages of their development, among all races of men; and
even constituting a regular part of the economy of certain insects.
In Europe it is difficult to believe that some of the early advances
of society could have been made without its aid. It belongs to that
stage when wealth, which gives the leisure which makes any degree of
intellectual culture possible, can only be secured by binding down the
many to compulsory toil for the few, and giving to them all that the
many can produce in excess of the absolute necessaries of existence.
The Homeric chieftain was the product of this arrangement. So were the
highly-cultured Greeks of the age of Pericles. It was the same with
the governing class in the period of Roman greatness. It is, in one
view, a very complete form of the institution, because it embraces
every member of the community, from the top to the bottom. It divides
society into two castes, assigning to one leisure, culture, the use of
arms, government; to the other, denying them all participation in these
advantages and employments, it assigns absolute subjection, labour, and
bare subsistence. The history of this institution is very instructive. It
shows how, in human affairs, circumstances rule and decide the question
of expediency; and even that it is impossible to predicate of matters
of this kind good or evil absolutely. Here, at all events, is something
(it is, in fact, the very mould in which a community is cast,) which at
one time builds up society, and at another overthrows it; which at one
time is the cause and instrument of progress, and at other times retards,
or reverses it; which, under some conditions, is not unfavourable to
morality, and is under others immoral and demoralizing.
Of all these arrangements, then, we may suppose that they were, in their
respective times, necessary and useful. They appear to belong to early
and transitional stages of society, and not, if there be, or ever is to
be, such a state, to its maturity. They mean either that every member
of society is not yet fit to be trusted; or that society cannot yet
afford to endow all its members with freedom and power, and that, under
such circumstances, more or less rigid restriction is an indispensable
condition of life and growth.
The abolition of slavery is the recognition, morally and
logically—though, of course, not always practically and politically: it
must, however, always work in this direction—of the axioms ‘that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit
of happiness.’
In India the word for caste signifies colour. The castes are the colours.
This connects the institution with conquest. Probably in Egypt it had
the same origin. We have seen that it might have had. But this could
not have maintained it through thousands of years. Nothing could have
given it such vitality but its utility. Benefit of clergy is evidence of
there having been a period in the history of modern Europe when only a
very limited class was educated, and so it became the sole depository of
the knowledge of the times. As there was such a period in the history of
those who had inherited the arts of Greece and Rome, and among them an
easy style of writing, it could not have been otherwise in old Egypt. The
difficulties of maintaining knowledge must at that time have been very
great; and, as all knowledge was more or less connected with religion
(religion, indeed, then meaning the organization of the knowledge of
the community for the regulation of its life and action), it naturally
fell into the keeping of the priests, who could see no advantage in
communicating it to the profane vulgar. It was their patrimony, their
inheritance. This at once preserved it, and constituted its guardians
a caste. The existence of one such caste would make the general
introduction of the system throughout the community natural and easy. It
was obviously in such times the best way of maintaining the knowledge
of every art, as well as of religion itself. It also endowed society
with a fixity and order nothing else could impart to it. Every man in
the community was born to a certain definite condition and occupation,
of which nothing could divest him, and which he never could abandon.
This utterly extinguished all motives for, and almost the very idea of,
insurrections and revolutions.
Such a state of society had, of course, certain easily-seen
disadvantages, but it also had certain very considerable advantages. The
chief of these was that just adverted to, that society, having paid the
penalty of the restrictions and losses the system imposed, advanced with
internal peace and order. These, when the system had once been disturbed,
could never again be attained till society had arrived at the opposite,
that is the Chinese or American, extreme, in which there is abolished,
as far as possible, every vestige of the old system, even what might
be called the natural and uninstituted caste of the ignorant. Caste
throughout from top to bottom, or caste nowhere, equally ensures domestic
quiet. All between, every form of the partial application of the system,
carries within itself the germs of social disquiet, dissatisfaction,
and disorder. The history of all countries has been hitherto very much
a history of caste. This is a point which has not been sufficiently
kept in sight. The picture of social order maintained in ancient Egypt
for several thousand years, as in India, astonishes us. Universal caste
explain the phenomenon. There was nothing in the bosom of those great
communities to suggest recourse to arms, except the occasional occurrence
of religious innovations, or of dynastic rivalries.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
PERSISTENCY OF CUSTOM IN THE EAST.
Meddle not with them that are given to change.—_Book of
Proverbs._
Every traveller in the East is struck with the obstinate persistency
of forms of expression even, as well as of customs, he meets with. In
bargaining in the Khan Khaleel Bazaar, at Cairo, for an amber mouthpiece
for a pipe, I had to go through the very dialogue which passed between
Ephron and Abraham. I objected to the price. ‘Nay, then,’ replied the
modern Hittite, ‘I give it thee. Take it, I give it thee.’ At last the
price was agreed upon, and he took his money. Some time afterwards, at
Jaffa, I noticed that a roguish hanger-on for odd jobs at the hotel was
using precisely the same words, in an attempt he was making to get a
friend I was with to give him for a box of oranges ten times the price
they were selling at in the market, only a couple of hundred yards off.
I was struck with the coincidence, and, on mentioning the matter to
one familiar with the ways of the East, I learnt that this pretended
gratuitous offer of the article represented a regular recognized stage in
the form of bargaining. For three thousand years, at all events, it has
been in stereotype.
Marriages are arranged now, as was that of Isaac and Rebekah, without the
principals having seen each other.
Women in the East to-day wear the veil just as they did in the time of
the Patriarchs.
The shoes are still taken off on entering holy places. The worshipper, in
praying, still turns his face in the direction of the great sanctuary of
his religion.
“Jezebel stimmied her eyes.” So the Septuagint version has it. This
translation was made at Alexandria by Jews. Their own wives and daughters
had made them familiar with the practice, and with the word technically
used to express it; and they very naturally and properly adopted the
technical term in their translation. They again used it in the parallel
passage of Ezekiel. The rendering in our English Bible of this incident
in Jezebel’s last toilet is misleading. It makes her “paint her face.”
This suggests the rouge-pot and the cheeks, instead of the kohl-stick and
the eyes. On the monuments we see that the ladies of old Egypt had the
same practice. In the streets of the Cairo of to-day you find that the
ladies of modern Egypt have retained it. The object of the practice is
two-fold—to give prominency to the eyes, the most expressive feature, and
to make the complexion of the face, by the effect of the contrast with
the thus deepened darkness of the eyes, appear somewhat fairer.
The history of Joseph, I might almost call it the Josephead, the more
distinctly to indicate my meaning, wears very much the appearance of an
episode in a great national epic cycle, which had been handed down from
the legendary age, and which must have been, as is still the case with
oriental romances, in form prose, though in style and spirit full of
dramatic force and poetry. I can imagine the men and children sitting
at the tent-door, and the women within, to hear its recital. Just
such histories are now recited daily throughout the East. While their
incidents interest and entrance the imagination, they teach history,
morality, and religion. How pleasingly do the high moral aims of this
story of Joseph, so simple and natural, so true and profound, contrast
with the frivolous, mawkish, false, sensational sentimentality of the
modern novel! Its ideas, style, form, and colouring supply almost a
collective illustration of the obstinate persistency we are noticing in
everything oriental. With the exception of slavery, which, in deference
to the ideas and feelings of the Christian world, has lately been
abolished by law in Egypt—though I understand the law is very imperfectly
observed—this history may be read to-day just as if its object were to
give a picture of the thought, feelings, and practices of modern Egyptian
life. If its dialogue, and all its minutiæ of detail, were heard for
the first time at the date of the Exodus, it would still possess a very
remote antiquity. It is, however, curious that we have every particular
of Joseph’s adventure with Potiphar’s wife in the story of the ‘Two
Brothers,’ the only Egyptian romance we have recovered, and the papyrus
manuscript of which is somewhat older, at least, than the Exodus; for
it was written, or edited, by Kagabu, one of the nine literati attached
to the household of Rameses the Great, for the instruction of the
crown-prince, Meneptha, in whose reign the Exodus took place.
Jusuf, by the way, is one of the commonest names in Egypt. Among others
of this name I met with was a lad, the most beautiful boy I saw in the
East, who had been, I was told, donkey-boy to the Prince of Wales at
Thebes, and who served me in that capacity on one of my visits to Karnak.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon, of course in their
Arabic forms, are all very common names. They must have been introduced
at the time of the Mahomedan invasion, unless the Christian invasion had
brought them in some centuries earlier.
The modern Egyptians’ ideas of unclean things and persons, of the
obligation of washing hands before meals, and their practice, while
eating, of sitting round the dish and dipping into it, were, we know,
very much the same among the Hebrews.
The serpent charmer still charms the adder, as in the Psalmist’s day,
with neither more nor less of wisdom.
It was an enactment of the law given by Moses, that if a poor man pawned
his clothes, they should be returned to him at sunset, that he might have
something to sleep in. So is it with the modern Arab; he passes the night
in the clothes he had worn during the day.
Hospitality, the treatment of women, the relation of the sexes, respect
for age and for learning, belief in dreams, the arbitrary character of
the government, indifference to human suffering, absence of repugnance to
take human life, and, indeed, almost all that goes to constitute what is
distinctive in the life of a people, is the same now in the East as it
was in the earliest days of which we have any record. Some differences,
however, and not unimportant ones, are obvious at a glance—as, for
instance, that in the organization of society, and the well-being of its
members, there has been great and lamentable retrogression. For this our
good friends, the Turks, are in no small degree responsible.
The perpetual change among Europeans in great things as well as in
small—in manners and customs, in social ideas and practices, in dress, in
laws, in ideas and forms of government—indicate the operation of widely
different influences.
CHAPTER XXXV.
ARE ALL ORIENTALS MAD?
_They_ hear a voice you cannot hear.
_They_ see a hand you cannot see.—TICKELL.
A friend of mine who has resided much among Orientals, and is very
familiar with their ways of thinking and acting, is in the habit of
affirming that he never had dealings with any one of them without soon
discovering in him a loose screw. Every mother’s son of them, he thinks,
is, to some degree, and in some way or other, mad. The meaning of this
I take to be that their way of looking at, and estimating things, and
feeling about them, is different from ours. They see what we cannot,
and cannot see what we can. This is, I believe, very much a question of
religion.
In the world of spirit a religion is a real, organic, living, acting
entity. It animates, it subdues, it pervades, it colours, it guides men’s
minds and hearts. They breathe it. They feed upon it. They are what it
makes them. Now our religion is characterized by liberty. It leaves men
to construct their own polities, and to devise for themselves the laws
they are to live by. It obliges them to understand that they are the
arbiters and the architects of their own fortunes. It leaves them free,
from age to age, to battle about, and to construct their own theology,
with the certainty that whether the same or different forms are used,
it will always in the end be adjusted to the ideas of the age, and even
of the individual. It appeals to men’s own ideas of God, which vary
as knowledge advances; and to the sense mankind have of what is just,
and merciful, and lovely, and of good report. It does not define these
things, for it supposes that the ideas of them are in man. It makes the
light that is within the measure of duty. One of the general results of
such a religion is, that it renders men capable, and desirous, too, of
thinking. It produces within them an habitual desire to see things as
they are, and to conform their feelings and their conduct to realities.
The system which is most diametrically opposite to this is that which
the Oriental has adopted. He has no liberty of any kind. He must
think, and feel, and live in accordance with, and every detail of his
inner and outer life must be conformed to, what were the ideas of the
Arab barbarians of twelve centuries ago. This is the procrustean bed
on which the mind of every Oriental is laid. This, then, is what my
friend’s nineteenth-century Christianity, or, if you prefer it, his
nineteenth-century ideas and feelings, have been brought into contact
with—the ideas and feelings of Arab barbarians of twelve centuries ago.
It would be somewhat surprising if he did not perceive something of
lunacy in the minds of such people.
What struck me in the Oriental was a kind of childishness. Both men
and women appeared to be only children of a larger growth. There was
an expression of childishness in their features, and there were very
perceptible indications of a corresponding condition of their minds. It
looked like moral and intellectual arrest. The manhood of the mind had
never been called into exercise, and had, in consequence, become aborted.
They never think. Why should they? All truth of every kind has already
been fully revealed to them. To question what they have received, or
to endeavour to attain to more, would be impious. They have hardly any
occasion to act, for is it not Allah who directly does everything as it
pleases Him, on the earth beneath, as well as in the heaven above?...
There is in them a softness of expression which could not co-exist with
activity, and firmness, and largeness of brain. Child-like, they believe
anything and everything. The more wonderful, and the more contradictory
to nature it may be, the more readily do they believe it. They have no
idea of extorting the secrets of nature. What good would it do them to
seek to know anything or everything? Allah will reveal what He pleases,
and when. Such knowledge would not promote their happiness. Their idea of
blissfulness is that of the Arab of the Desert. Shade and rest. Plashing
fountains and delightful odours. Lovely houris. This is not the stuff
that makes men.
Nature also works against them. Much time is needed for the acquisition
and digestion of knowledge, and for the growth of the moral and
intellectual faculties to what we regard as their full stature. The time,
however, allotted to them for these sovereign purposes is very short.
Where girls are married women at eleven, what time can there be for the
mind to mature itself? Compare this with the many years of deliberate
culture amongst ourselves. What can be done by the age of eleven? What
should we be if our mental culture and growth ended at that age? But in
their case it is so with half the community—the mothers; and so also
with the other half—the fathers, only in a somewhat less degree. Of
the negroes of the interior Sir Samuel Baker observes that the little
children are quick enough, but that mental development appears to have
ceased by the age of fourteen. I observed, and heard from several
Americans that they had observed, something of the same kind in the negro
schools of the United States. Up to an age not quite so advanced as that
Sir S. Baker speaks of, the coloured children appear to be as quick as
the children of the whites; but beyond that point they begin to fall
behind. Their apprehensiveness appears to have exhausted itself. This
must doom the black race in the United States, in their struggle with
the whites for the means of subsistence, to extinction. Just so, too,
must his prematurity always place the Oriental, in the struggle between
nations, at a disadvantage in comparison with the European. In him Nature
does not allow herself the time for doing what ought to be done.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE KORAN.
An quicquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipiatur.—LEMMA.
With respect to the Koran, the Orientals are at this day in the position
into which, as respects our Holy Scriptures, an attempt was made to bring
our forefathers in the days of mediæval scholasticism. They believe that
in their sacred volume is contained all knowledge, either explicitly or
implicitly. We have long abandoned definitively this idea. We have come
to understand that the New Testament announces itself only as a moral
revelation; and of that gives only the spirit, and not the letter; that
is to say, that it does not profess to give, and, as a matter of fact,
does not contain, a definite system of law, but the principles only which
should regulate such a system. It leaves us, therefore, to go not only
for our astronomy to astronomers, and for our geology to geologists, but
also for our municipal law to jurists and legislators, so long as what
they propound and enact is not at discord with Christian principles. The
Mahomedan, however, has not this liberty, for the Koran professes to
contain an all-embracing and sufficient code. It regulates everything.
This is very unfortunate; or, whatever it was at first, it has, in
process of time, come to be very unfortunate; for it makes the ideas—what
we must regard as the ignorance rather than the knowledge—of a more than
half-savage Arab of the seventh century the rule by which everything in
law, life, and thought is to be measured for all time.
While I was in the East I was full of commiseration for the people I saw
bound hand and foot in this way. They are handsome, clean-limbed fellows,
and quick-witted enough. There is in them the making of great nations.
Power, however, is an attribute of mind, and mind cannot work unless it
be free. While I commiserated them, I saw no hope for them. The evil they
are afflicted by appears not to admit of a remedy; because while, for men
who have advanced so far as they have, it is intellectual suicide to be
faithful to such a religion, to be unfaithful to it has hitherto proved
to be moral suicide.
Their ideas and sentiments on all the ordinary concerns and events of
life, and, in short, on all subjects, are the same in all, all being
drawn from the same source. So also are even their very modes of
expression. There is a prescribed form for everything that occurs; of
course, not drawn, in every instance, first-hand from the Koran, but, at
all events, ultimately from it, for these expressions are what have come
to be adopted by the people universally, as being most in harmony with
the spirit and ideas of the Book. The words to be used at meetings and
at partings, under all circumstances; the words in which unbecoming acts
and sentiments are to be corrected and acknowledged; the words, in short,
which are appropriate to every occasion of life, are all prescribed,
and laid up in the memory, ready for use. God’s name is rarely omitted
in these _formulæ_, reference being made sometimes to one of His
attributes, sometimes to another, as the occasion may require. Sometimes
a pious sentiment is to be expressed; sometimes a pious ejaculation will
be the correct thing. But everybody knows what is to be said on every
occurrence, great or small, of life.
Learning the Koran by heart is education. It is for this that schools
are established. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are _de luxe_, or
for certain occupations only. History and science, of course, have no
existence to their minds.
They treat the material volume itself, which contains the sacred words,
with corresponding respect. For instance, when carrying it they will
not allow it to descend below the girdle. They will not place it on the
ground, or on a low shelf. They will not, when unclean, touch it. They
will not print it for fear of there being something unclean in the ink,
the paper, or the printer. They will not sell it to any unbelievers, even
to such partial unbelievers as Jews or Christians. And in many other
ways, indeed in every way in their power, they endeavour to show how
sacred in their eyes is the Book.
In principle and effect it makes no great difference whether the
letter of the Sacred Text be exclusively adhered to, or whether it be
supplemented by more or less of tradition, and of the interpretations
and decisions of certain learned and pious Doctors of the Law. The
latter case, as far as the view we are now taking of the action of the
system is concerned, would be equivalent only to the addition of a few
more chapters to the Sacred Text. The existing generation would equally
be barred from doing anything for itself. If the laws of Alfred, or of
Edward the Confessor, had been preserved and accepted by ourselves as a
heaven-sent code, incapable of addition or improvement; or if the laws
of either had been received, with an enlargement of certain traditions,
interpretations, and decisions—we should, in either case, equally have
lost the practice and the idea of legislating for ourselves: that is
to say, we should have lost the invigorating and improving process of
incessantly discussing, adapting, and endeavouring to perfect our polity
and our code: so that what is now with us the self-acting and highest
discipline of the intellect, and of the moral faculty, would have been
transformed into the constant and most effectual discipline for their
enfeeblement and extinction.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ORIENTAL PRAYER.
Like one that stands upon a promontory,
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal to his eye.—SHAKSPEARE.
Prayer is still in the East, just what it was of old time, a matter of
prescribed words, postures, and repetitions. This, however, is only
what it is on the outside, and it is not the outside of anything that
keeps it alive, but what is within. It is there we must look for what
gives life. We shall be misled, too, again, if in our search for life
in this practice we suppose that what prompts it in Orientals must be,
precisely, the same as what prompts it in ourselves. Our manifestation
of this instinct is somewhat different from theirs. Prayer with
them is the bringing the mind into close contact with the ideas of
infinitude—infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness. It calls
up within them, by an intense effort of the imagination, their idea of
God, just as the same kind of effort calls up within ourselves any image
we please. The image called up, whatever it may be, produces certain
corresponding sensations and emotions. But none can produce such deep
emotions as the idea of God: it moves the whole soul. It is the ultimate
concentrated essence of all thought. The man who is brought under its
influence is prostrated in abasement, or nerved to patient endurance,
or driven into wild fanaticism. It calms and soothes. It fills with
light. It puts into a trance. Mental sensations may be pleasurable just
as those of the body, and the deeper the sensation the more intense
the satisfaction. In their simple religion these attributes of God are
really, as well as ostensibly, the nucleus, the soul, of the matter. All
things else are merely corollaries to and deductions from them—matter
that is evidently very subordinate. Theirs is a religion of one idea, the
idea of God. And the calling up within them of this idea is their prayer.
Or we may put this in another way. We may say that prayer is with them
the conscious presentation to their minds of certain ideas, and the
prostration of their minds before them—namely, the ideas of the different
forms of moral perfectness, the idea of intellectual perfectness or
complete knowledge, and the idea, belonging to the physical order,
of perfect power. Their conception of these ideas is, of course, not
identical with ours, but such as their past history, and the existing
conditions of Eastern society, enable them to attain to. We can separate
this effort of theirs into two parts. First, there is the creation in the
mind of these ideas of the several kinds of perfectness; and then there
is the effect the holding of them in the mind has on the mind itself.
That effect is the production in themselves of a tendency towards making
these forms of moral being, such as they have been conceived, instinctive
sentiments, and instinctive principles of action.
In this view prayer is with the Oriental, the effort by which he both
forms the conception of what is good, and actually becomes good; both,
of course, in accordance with the measure of what is possible for him.
But why, it may be asked, should he do this? All men who have lived in
organized societies have done it; though, indeed, the character of the
act has not in all been so distinctly moral as it is with the Oriental.
Still it has been a natural ladder by which individuals and communities,
and mankind generally, have mounted from lower to higher stages of moral
being. It has been the natural means by which the moral ideas, which
the working of the successive stages of social progress suggested, have
been brought into shape, purified, disseminated, and made universal and
instinctive. As respects the community everybody understands that its
peace, and order, and even that its existence, very much depend on there
being a general unanimity in moral ideas and sentiments throughout all
its classes and members. And it has always been perceived that the most
effectual way of bringing this about is that all should have the same
object of worship—that is to say, that the prayers of all should be the
same. Formerly, when these things were more studied than they are now,
this was regarded as the one paramount way. Fellow-citizens then were
those who worshipped the same Gods in the same temples; aliens were those
who worshipped other Gods. There could be no citizenship where there was
a diversity of prayers; for that gave rise to, and implied, a diversity
of moral standards. And with respect to the individual, the spontaneous
working of what is within has pretty generally revealed to him that this
moral effect of prayer is his highest personal concern. He regards it as
the advancement of his truest self; for, if he is not a moral being, he
cannot tell in what he differs, specifically, from the lower animals; and
prayer, he knows it is, which has been the chief means for keeping alive,
and nurturing, and bringing into form, his moral being. It gives birth,
form, permanence, and vitality to moral aspirations.
To dwell for a moment longer on the subject, looking still at the same
fact, but now from a somewhat different point of view. The object of
their prayer has been the highly compound abstraction of all, but more
especially in the moral order, that would, according to their ideas and
knowledge, contribute towards the upholding and building up of a human
society. We see indications of this elsewhere besides among Orientals.
In a democracy wisdom and counsel in the general body of the community
are necessary, and so at Athens was worshipped the Goddess of Wisdom. The
maintenance and enlargement of Rome depended on the sword, and so the god
of Rome was the God of War. The martial spirit and martial virtues were
necessary to them. When concord became necessary, a temple was erected to
Concord. This also explains the deification of living Egyptian Pharaohs,
and of living Roman emperors. Each was in his time the “_præsens deus_”
of society. What was done was done by their providence. Their will was
the law of society, and its regulative power.
Even revealed religion is not exempt from this necessity. When the
existence of the Hebrew people depended on the sword, Jehovah was the
Lord of Hosts, the God of Battles. He taught the hands to war, and
the fingers to fight. He gave them the victory over all their enemies
round about. He it was Who made them a peculiar people—that is to say,
Who brought about within them the sentiment of national exclusiveness;
and Who, in short, made them zealous of all the good works that would
maintain society under its existing conditions and circumstances. At the
Christian epoch, when the chief hope of the world was in peace and order,
He was regarded as the institutor of civil government; and as having made
all people of one blood, so that there could be no ground for anything
exclusive. As men’s ideas changed, the substance of their prayers changed
correspondingly. To deny these facts is to deny both history, and the
plain, unmistakable announcements of the Sacred Volume. And to reject the
grand, simple, instructive explanation universal history thus gives is to
refuse to accept that view of the working of providence in human affairs,
which God submits to our consideration, just as He does the order and
the mind of the visible material world. It is, in fact, to refuse to be
taught of God.
But to return to the modern Egypto-Arabs. To us there appears to be very
little, surprisingly little, in their minds. They have but little thought
about political matters, no thoughts about history, no thoughts about
the knowledge of outward nature. Their ideas, then, of God, which are
the summary of their religion, obtain full sway over them. Prayer is the
continual exhibition of them to their minds. It stirs and keeps alive
their hearts and souls. While these ideas are acting upon them they are
conscious of an unselfish, and sublime, exaltation of their moral, and
intellectual being.
With us Prayer has somewhat of a different aspect, both as to its
immediate source, and even, apparently, in some degree, as to its
substance. It is not always primarily, or mainly, an attempt to bring
our inmost thought into contact with the pure and simple idea of God.
It almost seems as if something had occurred which had interposed an
insulating medium between our hearts and that idea, which cannot now,
as of old, directly reach our hearts, and generate within them its
own forms of moral perfectness. Much of our Prayer is prompted by the
thought of our own wants, and of our own sins; and so has something of a
personal, and of a selfish character. Still, perhaps, this is ultimately
the same thing. It may be only an indirect way of reaching the same
point. It is, evidently, a perpetual reminder of our moral requirements,
and a perpetual effort to form just and elevated conceptions of those
requirements. This mode of culture quickens the moral sentiments, raises
them to the level of their immediate purpose, and makes them distinct,
vigorous, ever-present, and instinctive.
What has been said will explain why Orientals pray in set forms of
words. Words represent ideas; and the Prophet, or the Saint, whose mind
is in a state of extraordinary religious exaltation, and the general
thought of religious teachers and of religious people, can, of course,
better imagine the attributes of Deity, and clothe what they imagine in
more appropriate words, than ordinary people could. It is, therefore,
better to take their words than to leave the matter to the ignorant, the
unimaginative, and the dead in soul. Under their system of unchangeable
forms all become alike animated by the best ideas, presented in the most
suitable words. This will explain why they practise repetitions. With
their method it is a necessity.
Short forms, composed of as few ideas as a piece of granite is of
ingredients, and as inelastic and inexpansive, and those forms
incessantly repeated, could not affect us in the way of prayer; but
they mightily affect the Oriental. They are both the frame in which his
mind and life are set, and the spring upon which they are wound up. In
short, and in truth, these ideas are the seminal germs which fecundate,
legitimately, the moral capabilities of his nature, which, if unquickened
by their contact, either will become aborted; or, by having been brought
into contact with other illegitimate ideas, will give birth to abnormal,
and more or less pernicious developments.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PILGRIMAGE.
He hath forsaken his wife and children, and betaken himself to
a pilgrim’s life.—BUNYAN’S _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
The pilgrimage to Meccah occupies a large place in the thoughts, and
is the great event in the life of every true believer; and where the
faith is so elementary, so much reduced to the very simplest expression
of belief, all are believers. The great event of the year at Cairo, is
the return of the caravan of pilgrims from Meccah. The whole city is
moved. Many go out to welcome back the happy saints. At no other time
are men, or women, so demonstrative. In these days, no Christian people,
except the lower classes in Russia, have the ideas which produce these
emotions. No others are, speaking of the bulk of the people generally,
in the pilgrim condition of mind. There was, however, a time when, in
this matter, we were all alike. The pilgrim staff and shell were then as
common, and as much valued, in England as elsewhere.
We now ask how these ideas came to exist in men’s minds? An equally
pertinent question is how they became extinct? The answer to either will
be the answer to both. A little vivisection, which may be practised
on the mind of the modern Arab, will reveal to us the secret. On
dissecting it we find that it is in that state in which the distinction
between things moral and spiritual on the one side, and things physical
on the other, has not yet been made. These two classes of ideas are
in his mind in a state of intimate fluid commixture. There is a vast
difference here between the mind of the Arab and that of the European,
excepting of course from the latter a large part of the Greek communion,
and some small fractions of the most behindhand of the Latin. With us
these two classes of ideas have become disentangled, and have separated
themselves from each other. Each has crystallized into its own proper
form, and retired into its own proper domain. Hence it is that the idea
of the value of pilgrimages still holds its ground amongst them, but has
disappeared from amongst us.
It belongs to precisely the same class of ideas as the belief that if
a man drinks the ink, with which a text of the Koran has been written,
dissolved in a cup of water, he will be thereby spiritually benefited;
that bodily uncleanness injuriously affects the soul; that having eaten
some particles of dust from the Prophet’s tomb makes you a better man;
or to take the process reversely, that the thoughts of an envious or
covetous man (the evil eye), will do you some bodily hurt; or that Ghouls
and Afreets—creatures of your mind—feed on dead bodies, and throw stones
at you from the house-top. When our Christian ancestors were in the same
stage of mental progress, similar beliefs, or rather confusions of ideas,
some precisely the same, were manifested in them. A great advance has
been made when men have come to see that what defiles is not what goes in
at the mouth, but what comes from the heart. This has a wide application;
at all events men, when it is seen, go no more pilgrimages.
I went up to Jerusalem with the ideas about pilgrimages I have just
set down stirring in my mind. My object in going was that I might be
enabled the better to understand history by making myself acquainted
with the very scenes on which it had been enacted. I wished to become
familiar with those peculiar local aspects, and influences of nature,
which had gone some way towards forming the character of those who had
made the history, and which had, indeed, themselves had in this way much
to do with the making of it. Nothing could be further from the pilgrim
condition of mind. I believe, however, that I did not come away with my
(as some would call it) cold-blooded philosophy quite untouched. True, I
turned with repugnance from the scenes that presented themselves around
the supposed Holy Sepulchre. I felt commiseration, mingled in some sort
with respect, for the prostrations, the tears, the hysterical sobs of
the poor Greek, Armenian, and Latin pilgrims. I contemplated them for
a time, till feelings of pain preponderated, which, as I turned away,
were exchanged only for feelings of disgust as I saw the priests, and
thought of their frauds, their greed, their indifference, their dirt,
and their mutual animosities. I again had to repress the same feelings
in the Garden of Gethsemane, when I found it in possession of some
unusually begrimed monks, who had enclosed it with a wall ten feet high,
and without a single opening through which the eye could catch a glimpse
of the interior; and who only admitted you in the hope of backsheesh.
Still the pilgrim feeling grew upon me. I had crossed the Brook Kedron
to a place where there had been a garden; I had stood in what had been
the courts of the temple, and where had been the temple itself; I had
looked on the goodly stones of the substructures of the temple, I had
beheld the city from the Mount of Olives. In my walks round the walls
I had stood on the rock, somewhere at the north-west angle, where the
Light of the world had sealed His truth with His life-blood. Imagination
on the spot had recalled the particulars of the scene. Day by day I was
conscious that the pilgrim feeling was gaining strength within me. And
now that I am quietly at home again, I can hardly persuade myself but
that I am in a different position from what I was in before: I can hardly
think that I am just as other men are—that all this is nothing. I have
trodden the same ground, I have been warmed by the same sun, and I have
breathed the same air, as He. I have looked on the same objects, and they
have impressed on my brain the same images as on His.
But we must get over these pilgrim feelings—we must not allow ourselves
to be juggled and cheated by the old confusion of things physical with
things spiritual. It is not poetry to put the chaff for the corn. There
is no talisman like truth. He is not there: nor are we the nearer to
Him for being there. He still exists for us in His words. The thought,
the spirit that is in them we can take into our hearts and minds. This
is truly to be very near to Him; this is to be one with Him. This is a
pilgrimage all can go, and which really saves.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
ARAB SUPERSTITIONS.—THE EVIL EYE.
Many an amulet and charm
That would do neither good nor harm.—HUDIBRAS.
The traveller in Egypt, who observes what is before him, and feels an
interest in conversing with the natives, will have many opportunities
for learning something about their superstitious or religious
ideas—for, of course, much that with them is religion with us would
be superstition—such as their belief in charms and amulets, and in
the beneficial, or remedial efficacy of utterly irrelevant acts and
prescriptions. This is a large—indeed, almost an inexhaustible—subject,
because it pervades their whole lives, influencing almost everything
they do, and every thought that passes through their minds. Whenever an
Arab wishes to attain to, or to escape from, anything, his method of
proceeding is not to use the means—or if he does, not to be content with
them—which, in the nature of things, would lead to the desired result,
but to depend either entirely, or, at all events, as a collateral means,
on something else which can have no possible bearing on his object, but
which, in consequence of the presence in his mind of certain ideas, and
the absence of certain others, he thinks will have, or ought to have,
some impossible effects.
Among Egyptians—it is so with all Orientals, there is an universal belief
in the potency of the Evil Eye. If any one has looked upon an object with
envious and covetous feelings, evil will ensue; not, however—and this
is the heart and the peculiarity of the superstition—to the covetous
or envious man, but to the coveted or envied object. I will attempt
presently to explain this inversion of moral ideas. A mother in easy
circumstances will keep her child in shabby clothes, and begrimed with
dirt, in order that those who see it may not think it beautiful, and
so cast an envious or covetous eye upon it. Some kenspeckle object is
placed among the caparisons of a handsome horse or camel, that the eye of
the passer-by may be attracted to it, and so withdrawn from the animal
itself. The entire dress of a Nubian young lady consists of a fringe
of shredded leather, two or three inches deep, worn round the loins.
On the upper edge of this fringe two or three bunches of small white
cowrie shells are fastened. The traveller might, at first,—and, probably,
generally does,—suppose that this is merely a piece of coquetry,
inspired by the desire to attract attention. The truth is the reverse.
The white shells against the ebon skin are, it is true, intended to
attract attention—not at all, however, in the way of coquetry, but from
the opposite wish that the eye of the passer-by may be attracted to the
shells, and thus that the wearer may herself escape the effects of the
coveting, Evil Eye.
There is the same motive in the adoption by women of gold coins as
ornaments for the head. Let the eye be attracted to that coveted and
precious object, and diverted from the face. So, also, with the use of
the veil; and so with many other preventive devices.
But as the source of the mischief is in the heart of the beholder,
prevention may go further, and may dry up, if the effort be wisely made,
the source of the evil at the fountain-head. This is to be done by so
disciplining men’s minds, as that they shall habitually refrain from
looking on anything with envious, or covetous thoughts. The method they
have adopted for effecting this desirable change in the heart is to make
it a point of religion, and of good manners, that a man shall so word
his admiration as, at the same time, to express renunciation of any wish
to possess the beautiful, or desirable object before him that belongs to
another. He must not express his admiration of it simply. It would be
reprehensible for him to say of a beautiful child, or dress, or jewel, or
garden, or anything that was another’s, ‘How charming!—how beautiful!’
He must associate his admiration with the idea of God, and with the
acknowledgment, that he submits to the behest of God that has given it
to another. This he does by saying, ‘God’s will be done (Mashallah),’
or by some similar expression. If he should so far forget propriety as
to express himself otherwise, the bystanders would recall him to good
manners, and a proper sense of religion in the matter, by reproving him.
But supposing all these preventive measures of strategy, religion, and
politeness have failed, and the Evil Eye, notwithstanding, must needs
alight on some object, what is to be done then? The only resource is in
the recognized counter-agents. These are of two kinds—those which have
a prophylactic, and those which have a remedial efficacy. To the first
belong some selected texts of the Koran, or the whole of the sacred
volume, which must be enclosed in a suitable receptacle, and hung about
the neck of the person to be protected. A little piece of alum has the
same effect. Some have recourse to the ninety-nine titles of the Deity;
others prefer the titles, equal in number, of the Prophet. These may be
kept in the house, as well as about the person. Lane has an interesting
chapter on Arab superstitions, from which we may gather that the names of
the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and of their dog, and the names of the few
paltry articles of furniture left by the Prophet, have great potency.
But supposing these, and other such prophylactics have failed, as must
sometimes happen, in averting the Evil Eye, nothing remains then but the
use of antidotes. One that commends itself to general adoption is, to
prick a piece of paper with a pin, to represent the eye of the envious
man, and then to burn it. Another that is equally efficacious is, to burn
a compound of several pinches of salt stained with different colours, and
mixed with storax, wormwood, and other matters. But I need not pursue
this part of a single subject any farther: what has been said will be
enough to show what are their ideas as to the ways in which the Evil Eye
is to be combated.
And now for the explanation I would venture to offer of what is to us
the strangest part of the matter, that such a belief as this of the
Evil Eye should have had any existence at all, because it involves the
immoral idea that all the suffering falls on the innocent victim, and
that there is no retribution for the guilty cause of the mischief. This I
am disposed to think has been brought about by the facts and experience
of life in the East. There the Evil Eye has always had a very real, and
fearful significance; and people have done very wisely in endeavouring to
guard against it. It never would have done in that part of the world,
nor would it do at this day in Cairo, or anywhere else, even down to the
most secluded village, for one to flaunt before the world what others
might covet, or envy him the possession of. The simple plan there has
ever been, that those should take who have the power, and that those
only should keep who are not known to possess. A man who had a beautiful
wife, or child, or costly jewel, or a showy horse, or camel, or anything
good, if it were observed, and known, would at any time, in the East,
have been pretty sure to lose it, and perhaps with it his own life into
the bargain. This of course has been a master-fact in forming the manners
and customs of the people. Hence their ideas about the Evil Eye. What
befel Uriah and Naboth, has befallen many everywhere. Hence the wisdom of
keeping good things out of sight, and of diverting attention from them.
Hence the belief that the evil is for the innocent possessor, and not
for the wicked envier, or coveter. The methods adopted for obviating its
effects are, of course, merely the offspring of fear acting on ignorance.
I need not give any further illustrations of this condition of the Arab
mind. A general statement will now be sufficient. Every evil that flesh
is heir to, every ailment, every as yet unsatisfied yearning, every
loss, every suffering, has its appropriate treatment, all being of the
same character as that which prescribes, for some moral obliquity in A’s
mind, that B should burn a piece of alum, or of storax, purchased on a
particular day. Some of these practices are laughable, some disgusting.
Some that are of the latter class recall Herodotus’s story of the means
to which King Phero, in the days of old Egypt, had recourse for the
recovery of his sight.
It is cheap to laugh at these ideas and practices, but we have ourselves
passed, in this matter, through the same stage. We had our day of
such remedies, when we attempted to cure diseases, and to dispel evil
influences with charms and amulets; and to ensure success by having
recourse to the luck that was supposed to be in days, and things, and
names, and places. The memory of all this has not, even yet, completely
vanished from amongst us. The echo of it may still at times be heard.
The history of all people shows that these things contain the germ
of the empirical art of medicine. The first step in real progress is
the abandonment of the idea that disease is the irreversible decree
of heaven, or of fate. The second stage, that in which the Orientals
now are, is the metaphysical treatment of disease—that which assumes
that each disease is to be met by something which, from some fancied
analogy, or fitness, or antagonism, it is supposed ought to counteract
it. This is futile in itself, but not in its ulterior consequences, for
it issues eventually in the discovery of the true remedies. In time, if
circumstances favour, the subject comes to be treated scientifically.
Every ailment is then deliberately examined, with the view of discovering
in what it actually consists; and remedies are applied which, in
accordance with the known laws and properties of things, it is reasonably
hoped will check its growth or remove it.
It is curious to observe, while we are on this subject, that homœopathy
is only a reversion to old ways of thinking. Its foundation is a
metaphysical dictum that like cures like. And its practice that these, or
some other, globules will in each case produce artificially the desired
disease, is as contrary to the evidence of the senses, and the known
properties of the globules, as anything to be found in Arab therapeutics.
CHAPTER XL.
ORIENTAL CLEANLINESS.
Wash and be clean.—_II. Kings._
On the subject of cleanliness, Orientals’ ideas are the very reverse
of what, to a time within the memory of the present generation of
Englishmen, we entertained. Our idea used to be that it meant a clean
shirt; theirs is that it means a clean skin. The Mr. Smith, who,
some forty years ago, obtained, during his University career, his
differentiating epithet from his practice of changing his linen three
times a day, would probably, from unfamiliarity with the bath, have been
regarded by Orientals, as might many a beau of that, and of the preceding
generation, as an insufferably dirty fellow. The annoyance Thackeray
represents an old lawyer in chambers as feeling at the daily splashings
of the young barrister over his head, and his inability to imagine how
sanity of mind, or body, could be compatible with such a practice, fix
the date, now about thirty years ago, when our manners and customs were
changing on this point.
The old oriental ideas, which go so much further towards satisfying the
requirements of the case, are still carefully maintained. In order that
they may become habitual and universal, they have been made imperative
by religion. The when, the where, and the how have all been prescribed.
The shaving also of the head, the plucking out of hair, the use of
depilatories, and circumcision, which is practised even by the Christian
Copts, are customs which, though not imposed by religion, are generally
observed, because they contribute to the same object as their frequent
and scrupulous ablutions.
With these practices we must class their ideas about the uncleanness of
dead bodies, and the defilement contracted by contact with them; for, of
course, the idea of defilement had its origin in the fear of what might
engender, or convey disease.
The persistent oriental aversion to knives and forks may be connected
with this subject. The disinclination to use them may arise out of an
uncertainty as to whether they may not have contracted defilement, which
might sometimes mean the power of conveying infection. The leprosy of
the East, and the cutaneous diseases of that part of the world—almost
all the diseases mentioned in the Old Testament are more or less of this
kind—are at the bottom of these ideas and practices. On the whole, we can
have no doubt but that, if they were as uncleanly, and careless about
these matters, as a large portion of our own population, the range of
many bad diseases—climate and meagreness of diet being their predisposing
causes—would be very greatly extended. As things, however, are, it is
pleasing to observe how carefully all classes in the East attend, in
their way, to personal cleanliness. The poorest, even those who cannot
afford a change of clothes, do not appear to neglect it. The stoker of
an Egyptian steamer does not look like a stoker throughout the whole of
the twenty-four hours; nor would, if there were such people, an Egyptian
chimney-sweeper never be seen without the grime of his work.
It must have been for reasons of the kind I have referred to (though
doubtless religious grounds were imagined for the practice, for those
were times when there was no other way of thinking about or of putting
such matters) which led the Egyptian Priesthood to abstain, in their
own persons, from the use of woollen garments. Habiliments of this
material, from their condition not being readily ascertainable by the
eye, and from their not being chilly to the skin when saturated with
perspiration, are less likely to be frequently washed than those which
are made of vegetable fibres. It is much the same with silk and leather.
We know that in the Middle-Ages, woollens, which were then very much
in use next to the skin, were not very frequently washed, though the
soap which would have thoroughly cleansed them, had then been known for
centuries, for it had been an old invention of the Germans, among whom
the Romans had found it in use. The same negligence we may be sure had
existed to an equal, or greater, extent in all the old world. At that
time the washing, especially, of woollens was costly, and could only have
been insufficiently accomplished. The Egyptians, we know, used alkaline
preparations for rendering soluble the animal matter their clothes had
contracted by being worn, that is to say for washing them. They were
probably also acquainted with the solvent and detergent properties of
the animal appliance which the Emperor Vespasian was bantered for having
excised. We may suppose this because its washing power is referable to
the alkaline matter contained in it, which was just what they were in the
practice of collecting for washing their clothes; and also because the
supply derived from the camel was known to be particularly effective for
this purpose. In passing, the unsavoury tax just referred to was imposed
as a method of making the scourers, so large and important a trade at
Rome that they had their own quarter of the city, pay for licences to
carry on their business, in such a manner that in each case the cost of
the licence should be proportioned to the amount of business carried on.
This was effected by taxing the chief material employed in the trade.
The impost must have been productive, for it was retained as an item of
Roman excise for two centuries. These were means, however, which were
never likely to have been turned to much account, anywhere, by the mass
of the people. The consequences, of course, would be serious. The animal
matter that accumulated, and was decomposed in such clothing, so used,
must to some extent have been reabsorbed through the pores of the skin;
and so have been the fruitful source of cutaneous, and other disorders.
Probably this was the very cause why our forefathers were visited so
frequently by the plague, and jail fevers. The priests of old Egypt quite
understood how prejudicial to health, particularly in that climate, are
all practices of this kind; and they felt that it behoved them, as the
teachers of the people, to set an example of cleanliness in such matters.
To do this was also pleasing to their thought, because it symbolized,
and appeared to have some connexion with, the analogous virtue of moral
purity; and so they imposed on themselves the ceremonial observance of
abstaining from woollen garments. There could be no question about the
perfect cleanness, such as became a Priest, of their robes of glistening
white linen. This was a lesson to every eye. Such were the thoughts and
practices of men, on these subjects, in the valley of old Nile, at least
six, no one can tell how many more, thousand years ago.
Orientals’ regard for cleanliness I said is shown in their way, because,
as might have been expected of ceremonial practices, it does not extend
beyond the letter of the law; the object and spirit of the law, as is
usual in such cases, having been lost sight of. The letter of the law
is compatible with untidiness and dirt in their houses, and does not
exact anything from children, who are as yet too young for religious
observances. Their houses, therefore, and children are singularly untidy
and dirty. Why make burdens unnecessarily severe? Why go beyond the
letter? If they submit to the law in what it directs, surely they may
indemnify themselves by compensatory neglect in what it does not direct.
This element of feebleness and failure is inherent in all religious
systems which undertake to think for the whole community in every matter.
It is as conspicuous in Romanism as in Mahomedanism. The letter killeth:
the spirit it is that giveth life. Up to a certain point, but it is one
that is soon reached, they elevate and give light. When that point has
been reached, they arrest and abort moral growth, and extinguish light.
CHAPTER XLI.
WHY ORIENTALS ARE NOT REPUBLICANS.
That grass does not grow on stones is not the fault of the
rain.—_Oriental Proverb._
It seems strange that Republicanism should never have commended itself
to the minds of Orientals. Some of the conditions to which they have
been subjected, and some of their ideas ought, one might have thought,
to have engendered the wish to give a trial to this form of polity.
Socially, ideas of aristocratic exclusiveness have little weight with
them, and, politically, none at all. The expression of ‘taking a man
from the dung-hill and setting him among princes’ is old, and represents
an old practice; and it is a proceeding with which they are to this day
in their government, and the hierarchy of office, quite familiar. This
ultra-democratic idea of the equal fitness, even for the highest places,
of men taken from any class in society, offends none of their sentiments,
or instincts. They would not be shocked at seeing one who had begun life
as a donkey-boy, or a barber, so long as he was an Arab, or Osmanlee, and
a true believer, raised to be a Pasha. Then, too, no people in the world
have suffered so much, and so long, from their respective governments
as the Orientals have from their despotic monarchies, administered by a
descending series of hardly responsible governors. And as to general
manners and ideas, there is probably a greater amount of uniformity in
the East among all classes, than is to be found elsewhere. One might have
supposed that all this, at one time or another, sooner or later, would
have disposed them to take refuge in Republicanism. We have, however, no
instance of the idea having been entertained. It seems as if they had
no capacity for apprehending it, for the account Herodotus gives us of
the proposal to democratize the Government of Persia is a transparent
Greek fable. At all events, taking the story as we have it, the mover was
unable to find a seconder for his proposal.
This phenomenon in their history surprises us: it is, however, their
history which enables us to understand it, and to understand it
completely. They never possessed a legislature. This, which every little
Greek city possessed, which was the very soul of Greek political life,
and has ever been, more or less, a necessity of European political
life, never could have been known in the East. There the idea never
had any place in men’s minds; or, if it had, was aborted in the embryo
stage, and never saw the light. In short, with them a legislature was an
impossibility; for, as their laws have always been a revelation from God,
any attempt to legislate would have been nothing less than a direct and
formal denial, and renunciation of their religion.
In their systems, therefore, there has been room only for the
administrative, and executive departments of government. These, of
course, are secondary. With that which was first and highest, and
regulative of the whole, man had nothing at all to do. Under such a state
of things the administrative, and executive would naturally fall into the
hands of those who were best acquainted with the law, that is, of those
who were its constituted guardians, as priests, elders, doctors of the
law, &c., and of those who in any way, by force or favour, could attain
to power and office. Here is no place for republican, or democratic
ideas. The whole ground in every man’s mind is pre-occupied with ideas
that are antagonistic to them. If Orientals had had to make their own
laws, Republicanism would have been as common in the East as in the West;
perhaps more so.
In the Mosaic polity, though it was in some respects very favourable
to democracy, we see the absence of the legislative function leading
necessarily in the end to a monarchy; the monarchy having been preceded
by a rude exercise of administrative and executive functions, based in
the main on such moral and intellectual qualifications as the system
required. That the people in general assemblies, or through any other
machinery, should take into their own hands the management of their own
affairs was an idea that never at any time appears to have occurred to
them. It was alien to their system to imagine that the will of the people
was the source of power, or that law was the best reason of the community
made binding on all.
One can hardly understand, without some personal observation, and
thinking out what has been observed, how completely these oriental
systems extinguish liberty in every matter. Not only do they deny to
nations the right to frame their laws in conformity with the varying
needs of times and circumstances, but they even abrogate the liberty
of the individual to exercise his own judgment with respect to almost
everything he has to do, and almost to say, throughout life. Law being
a fixed immutable thing, it becomes unavoidable but that customs and
manners should be equally fixed and immutable. The extent to which this
is carried is, till one has witnessed it oneself, something difficult to
believe, indeed to comprehend. Every thought and emotion must be swathed
up in a certain prescribed form of words. The mummy of an Egyptian of
the old times tightly bandaged, stiff and lifeless, is the image of the
modern Egyptian’s mind. He has no kind of freedom. He is but a walking
and breathing mummy. Everything in the political, social, moral, and
intellectual order has been arranged and settled for everybody; and
everybody thoroughly and completely accepts the whole settlement, because
it comes to him from God, because it is the same to all classes and
individuals as to himself, and because the reasons, and, as far as they
go, the advantages, of the settlement are obvious, and commend themselves
to his understanding. In no mind, therefore, is there anything to give
rise to the germ of a desire to disturb the settlement. Here, then, there
is nothing which can cause the idea of political liberty to germinate.
Let the seed be sown again and again, it will fall always upon the rock.
CHAPTER XLII.
POLYGAMY.—ITS CAUSE.
Presto maturo, presto marcio.—_Italian Proverb._
The traveller is struck with the various ways in which the relation of
the sexes, that obtains throughout the East, has modified the manners,
and customs, and the whole life, of the people. Female society is
impossible. Women are not seen in the Mosks at times of prayer; and, we
are told, are seldom known to pray at home, never having been taught the
ceremonies requisite for prayer. One may walk through a crowded street
and not see a woman among the passers by. A woman cannot, in the regular
order of things, see the man who is to be her husband, or hold any
converse with him, till the marriage contract is executed, and she has
entered his house. Nor after marriage can she, with the exception of her
father and brothers, have any social intercourse with men. One cannot but
ask what it is that has given rise to manners, and customs, so opposite
to all we deem wise and desirable in this matter. We see at a glance that
they are the offspring of distrust and jealousy, and of a distrust and
jealousy, which, though unfelt by ourselves, exist in a high degree among
Orientals. What, then, is it that gives rise in them to these unpleasant
feelings? It must be some fact which not only has the power of producing
all this distrust and jealousy, drawing after them consequences of
sufficient reach to determine the whole character of the relations of the
sexes to each other, but it must also be something that is peculiarly
their own. Now, all these conditions are fulfilled by polygamy, and by
nothing else.
The fact that a man may possess a plurality of wives, and as many
odalisques as he can afford, and may wish to have in his establishment,
is the one element in oriental life to which everything else must
accommodate itself. Reverse the case, and, setting aside exceptional
instances, consider what, on the ordinary principles of human conduct,
would be the general working of the reverse of the practice. What
would be the state of things, and the customs and manners, which would
naturally arise, if the wife had to retain the affection of a plurality
of husbands? Would not, in that case, each woman, supposing they had the
power of establishing, and enforcing, what regulations they pleased, take
very good care that their husbands should have as little as possible to
do with other women? Would the singular wife allow the plural husbands to
see, or converse with, any woman but herself? Would she not confine them
in the men’s apartments? Would she allow them to go abroad unveiled? The
distrust and jealousy the women, under such arrangements, would feel,
have, under existing arrangements, been felt by the men. They have acted
on these feelings, and hence have been derived the manners and customs of
the East in this matter.
There is nothing in the objection that all do not practise polygamy. All
may practise it, and that is the condition to which the general manners
and customs must adjust themselves. What all recognize as right and
proper, and what all may act upon, is what has to be provided for.
But we have not yet got to the bottom of the matter. Certain manners
and customs may be seen clearly to be the consequences of a certain
practice: the subject, however, is not fully understood till we have
gone one step further, and discovered what gave rise to the practice.
The attempt is often made to dispose of this question offhand, by an
assumption that passion burns with a fiercer flame in the East than in
the West. This is what a man means when you hear him talking of the cold
European, and of the fiery Arab; the supposed excessive warmth of the
constitution of the latter being credited to the fervour of the Eastern
sun. There is, however, no evidence of this in the facts of the case, nor
does it account for them. If this is the true explanation, we ought to
find polyandry practised as well as polygamy. But there is no evidence
that this flame burns with a fiercer heat in Asia than in Europe. The
probability is that it is what may be called a constant quantity.
In investigating this, just as any other matter, what we have to do is
to ascertain the facts of the case, and then to see what can be fairly
inferred from them. Now, undoubtedly, the main fact here is that there is
a certain polygamic area. It is sufficiently well defined. It embraces
North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Persia. I do not mean that
polygamy has never been practised elsewhere. Like all other customs it
may have been carried beyond its proper boundaries: we know that it has
been. What I mean is that the area indicated is, and ever has been, its
true and natural home. The monogamic area of Europe is equally distinct.
Asia Minor is an intermediate, indeterminate region, which, though it is
an outlying peninsula of Asia by situation, approximates more closely to
Europe in its general features.
Now this polygamic area has one pervading, predominant, physical
characteristic: it is a region of dry sandy deserts; or, rather, it
is one vast sandy desert, interspersed with habitable districts.
This renders its climate not only exceptionally dry, but also, from
its comparative cloudlessness, exceptionally bright, which is not an
immaterial point, and, too, exceptionally scorching. An excess, then,
of aridity, light, and heat, is its distinguishing peculiarity. These
influences are all at their maximum in Arabia, which is in every way
its true heart and centre; and, in particular, the seed-bed and nursery
of the race best adapted to the region, and which, at last, flooded
the whole of it with its blood, its customs, and its laws. These are
all thoroughly indigenous, and racy of the soil—as much its own proper
product and fruit as the date is of the palm, or the palm itself of the
region in which it is found.
But of the woman of this region. It is an obvious result of the aridity
of the air, its almost constant heat, and of the floods of light with
which everything living is ceaselessly bathed, and stimulated, that
she is, in comparison with the woman of Europe, forced into precocious
development, and maturity, and consequently, which is the main point,
and, indeed, the governing element in the matter, into premature decline
and decay. To signalize one particular that is external and visible, this
climate appears to expand, to dry, to wither, to wrinkle the skin with
a rapidity, and to a degree, unknown in our more humid and temperate
regions. A woman, under these trying influences, is soon old. Between
nine and ten is the age of womanhood. Marriage even often takes place at
this age, or soon after. She is quite at her best at fifteen; decay is
visible at twenty; there are signs of age at twenty-five.
Men, too, from reasons easily explained, marry much younger there than is
customary—I might say than is possible—with us. Our civilization is based
on intellect far more than theirs; and it takes with us a long time for
a youth to acquire the knowledge he will find requisite in life. School
claims him, with those who can afford the time, till he is eighteen;
and with many the _status pupillaris_ is continued at the university
for three years longer: and no one would think that even then the age
for marriage had arrived. And here, again, much more is required for
supporting life through all ranks of society. This is another prohibition
against a young man’s marrying early. He must first work himself into
a position, in which he will have the means of maintaining a family in
the way required here, or wait till he has a fair prospect of being able
to do so. All this requires time; but in the East, where wants are few,
and not much knowledge is needed, a youth may marry very early. I saw at
Jerusalem the son of the Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar, who was then,
though only a lad of sixteen years of age, already married to two wives.
And so it follows that, in this region, before men have attained to even
the prime of life, their wives are getting old. A necessary consequence
of this must be that polygamy will come to be as natural as marriage
itself. It has, at all events, been so hitherto.
The facilities for divorce which law and custom provide in these
countries (all that is needed is a writing of divorcement) are a result
of the same causes: they are, in fact, a corollary to the practice
of polygamy. They enable both the man and the woman to escape from
what, under the system of polygamy, must often become an insupportable
situation, and have the practical effect of making marriage only a
temporary arrangement. Indeed, sometimes even before the marriage
contract is entered into, the law of divorcement is discounted in this
way by the mutual agreement of both parties.
That ‘age cannot wither her’ is, then, precisely the opposite of being a
characteristic of the Arab, or even of the oriental, woman. Had it been
otherwise with them, polygamy would never have been the practice over
this large portion of the earth’s surface.
In our cold, humid, dull climate opposite conditions have produced
opposite effects. Here the woman arrives slowly at maturity; and, which
is the great point, fights a good fight against the inroads of age. Man
has no advantage over her in this respect. And when she is marriageable,
she is, not a child of ten years of age, but a woman of twenty, with
sufficient knowledge, and firmness of character to secure her own rights.
The consequence, therefore, here is that men have felt no necessity for
maintaining a plurality of wives; and if they had wished for it, the
women would not have allowed them to have it. _Voilà tout._
Nature it is that has made us monogamists. No religion that has ever been
accepted in Europe has legislated in favour of the opposite practice,
because it was obvious, and all men were agreed on the point, that
monogamy was most suitable to, and the best arrangement for, us. The
exceptional existence of the Arabic custom in European Turkey is one of
those exceptions which prove a rule.
Suppose that, in the evolution of those ups and downs to which our
earth’s surface is subject, it is destined that the waves of the ocean
shall again roll over the vast expanse of the Sahara, which, as things
now are, is one of Nature’s greatest factories for desiccated air. Then
every wind that will blow from the west, or the south-west, over the
present polygamic area, will be charged with moisture, and will bring
clouds that will not only give rain, but will also very much diminish the
amount of light which is now poured down upon it. Suppose, too, something
of the same kind to have been brought about with respect to the great
Syro-Arabian desert. Northerly and easterly winds will then also have
the same effect. What now withers will have become humid. There will be
no more tent life. Better houses will be required, more clothing, more
food, more fuel. Men will not marry so early. Women will not get old so
soon. Polygamy will die out of the region. Religion will be so modified
as to accept, to hallow, and to legislate for the new ideas, which the
new conditions and necessities will have engendered. Religion will then
forbid polygamy.
CHAPTER XLIII.
HOURIISM.
Married, not mated.
There are some aspects and incidents of the subject of the preceding
chapter which, though one would prefer passing them by unnoticed, cannot
be omitted from an honest attempt to sketch the peculiarities of Eastern
life. For instance, in the Christian heaven they neither marry, nor are
given in marriage. Of this everybody approves: at all events one never
met, or heard of, a Christian who wished it otherwise. In the Mahomedan
heaven, however, those who have kept the faith, and lived holy lives,
will be rewarded with houris, damsels whose earthly charms have been
perfected for the hareems of Paradise. This article of his faith is
of such a nature, that it colours all the believer’s conceptions not
only of the life that is to come, but also of the life that is now. The
vision of these companions, as bright as stars, and as many in number,
is so attractive, and so engrossing, that all other thoughts of Paradise
die out of the mind and heart by the side of it. It is enough. It is
Paradise. And if so, then the houris of earth are the Paradise of earth.
I have been told by men who have resided long in the East, and have
had good opportunities for knowing the people well, that the facts of
life there have conformed themselves to this anticipation. The houris
of earth are the end-all and be-all of oriental life. Unlike anything
amongst ourselves, it is with a view to them that even the arrangements
of oriental houses are designed. No wonder men think they cannot make
too much of, or guard too carefully, this treasure, for what more can
heaven itself give them? Each, therefore, at once makes for himself in
this matter, as far as his means allow, a present Paradise. The Sheik
of the Great Mosk of Omar at Jerusalem introduced me to his son, a lad
of sixteen, who was, as I have lately mentioned, already the master of
two houris. It is said at Cairo that this part of the present Khedivé’s
household does not at all fall short of what might be expected of the
ruler of Egypt. To oriental thought there is nothing incongruous,
nothing unbecoming, in their prophet, the chosen recipient of the Divine
mind, and of all men the most absorbed in holy things, having been a
matrimonial pluralist.
This is the very opposite to a sentiment with which the European world
has been made familiar: the sentiment that husband, or wife, cannot be
loved, except at the expense of the love of God; that it would be well if
love were no worse than of the earth earthy; that those who do life-long
violence to this master sentiment of our youthful nature, who trample
upon it, and endeavour to extinguish it, and who put in its place such
feelings as minds, that do this despite to nature, can alone originate,
are better, and purer, and holier, than those who accept the duties, and
cares, and happinesses of wedded life. It is strange that these ideas,
which, through a natural reaction, had their birthplace in the East, are
now most alien to oriental modes of thought.
Orientals are not more luxurious than ourselves. The difference is that
their luxury is directed more exclusively to one object; and that that
one object is of such a nature as to make their luxury more enervating
than ours. Their luxury is houris, and all that appertains to them;
and all that contributes to investing their society with a halo of
sensuous delights; gorgeous apartments; plashing fountains; shady, and
colour-enamelled gardens; exquisite odours. Our universal luxury does not
relax the fibre of our minds, and bodies, as much as their one particular
luxury does theirs.
We may bring ourselves to understand, to some extent, how this system
acts on Orientals by picturing to our thought how it would act on
ourselves. Take the first fifty men you meet in the Strand, or see coming
out of a Church. Look into their faces, and endeavour to make our what
you can about them from their appearance. They are evidently most of them
married men. This means with us that their bark of life, as respects one
most important matter at all events, is now moored in harbour. Hope and
fortune are words that, in this matter, have no longer any meaning for
them. They have accepted the situation, and have ceased to think about
houris. Each has taken his wife for better, for worse; for sickness and
for health, till death shall part them. Their thoughts are now about
their business, their families, their pursuits, their society. But what
a change would come over the spirit of their dreams, if each could have
as many houris as he pleased, and could afford, of one kind or another,
houris ever fair and ever young; and could dismiss at any moment any he
wished, for any reason, to be rid of, by the simple form of a writing
of divorcement: no more trouble in it than in making an entry in one’s
pocket-book, and as exclusively one’s own affair; and could dismiss some
without even this small formality of the writing of divorcement. Under
such circumstances the houri question, which now has no place in the
thoughts of one of these worthy members of society, would straightway
occupy in the minds of many of them the first place of all. It would then
become necessary that a complete end should be put to many things that
no harm comes from now. These staid and respectable gentlemen would soon
find that houris must be excluded from Churches, as Orientals have found
that they must be from Mosks, during the time of Divine Service, because,
under the new system, it would be impossible for them to be devout when
surrounded with houris. Neither could houris be any longer domestic
servants in our fashion. Houris also must be excluded from society. Nor
would it be admissible for houris to appear in public, or anywhere,
except in the presence of their lords, with unveiled faces. A little
exercise of the imagination enables us to see what the metamorphosis
would be in ourselves. And on the Oriental the effects of the system are
even greater, because he has no political life, less pre-occupation from
business than we have, and none of those pursuits, and employments for
the mind, which our education, and the state of knowledge amongst us give
rise to here.
As we were returning to Cairo by the river, we passed the corpse of a
woman floating on the water. Every European of the party felt pity for
her fate, and for her fault. Had it been possible we would gladly have
given sepulture to these dishonoured remains of our common humanity, from
which the Divine inmate had been expelled so cruelly. Such sentiments,
however, are unintelligible to the Arab mind. The dogs and the vultures,
they think, will give sepulture good enough to one who has brought
disgrace so stinging on father, brothers, and husband. No pity have they
for the fallen. No consciousness of failings of their own.
This is evil. But perhaps it might be more evil to care for none of these
things. Indifference might be worse than hardness. Indifference would
mean moral decay and rottenness. Hardness here is moral indignation,
kindling up into an uncontrollable flame, which burns up, like stubble,
all other feelings. These are simple-minded people, and they feel
strongly within their narrow range of feelings.
Something perhaps might be said in extenuation of the fault of this poor
frail one, whose punishment, if it were not greater than her fault, was
still the extremest man can inflict. What agonizing moments must those
last ones have been when, not weakened by slow disease, nor broken by
days spent in long imprisonment, but fresh from her home, in the flower
of youth and Nature’s pride of strength, with the blood quick and warm,
she was being dragged away to the dark river, and by those God had made
nearest and dearest to her. Her brothers are foremost in the work. There
is not a heart in all the world, except, perhaps, of one whom she dare
not think of now, that is touched with pity for her. Brothers are turned
to worse than tigers, for they never did to death their own kin, or even
their own kind.
But under such a system there will be some, among those who have wealth
and leisure more than enough, who must fall. Women, like men, are only
what the ideas in their minds make them. Every idea that is implanted,
or springs up in the mind, may be regarded as a living thing. It has
the attributes of life. It roots itself in the brain; it feeds, and
assimilates what it feeds on; it grows; it ramifies; it bears fruit: it
propagates itself after its kind; it carries on the Darwinian conflict
for life with other ideas. If not killed itself, it may kill them. It may
develop itself abnormally. It may get possession of an undue proportion
of the ground.
These are general properties. But each particular idea has also,
precisely as the various species of plants have, its own special
properties. Some are beneficent, and these are beneficent in various
ways. Some are poisonous, and these are poisonous in various ways. Some
bear little fruit, some much. Some are serviceable to all, some only to
a few. Some are feeble, some strong. Some are bitter, some sweet. Some
burn, some soothe. Some are beautiful, some unsightly. Some can stand
alone, some need support.
Every brain is a world any of these may grow in, and in which some must
grow. For the seeds of some are carried about in the air. The seeds of
others circulate in the blood. Others come from the heart. Some also are
the growth of good seeds deposited in the mind by human intention and
care.
What, then, are the ideas which have been implanted, or have somehow come
to exist, in the minds of these inmates of the hareem? As a rule they
have been taught nothing. Not even their religion. They have not been
permitted to enter a Mosk at the time of prayer. All the ideas which get
established in the minds of educated women in our happier part of the
world, through some religious instruction, through some acquaintance
with history, or art, or science, or poetry, or general literature, have
never had a chance in the minds of the ladies of Cairo. They were left
to those ideas, the germs of which float about in the air, or circulate
in the blood, or come from the heart. And the only air that could convey
ideas to them was that of the hareem; first of the hareem in which they
were brought up, then of the hareem in which they must pass the remainder
of their days. They have never breathed, and will never breathe, any
other air. And as to the ideas, the germs of which are in the blood, and
which come from the heart, they never had any chance of regulating them.
Womanhood came upon them at the age of ten. Many were married at twelve.
Why, before it could have been possible, had the attempt been made, for
them to receive the ideas that come from religion, literature, poetry,
science, art, or history, the germs that come from the blood, and from
the heart, had got possession of the whole ground, and had absorbed
all the nutriment the ground contained. There was no room for, nor
anything to feed, any other ideas: for them time was necessary, and that,
precisely, was the one thing it was impossible to have.
No wonder, then, that the lords of the hareem suppose the ground
incapable of producing anything better. Under the circumstances perhaps
they are right. Hence comes their thought that a woman is a houri, a
toy: nothing more. But a toy that is very liable to go wrong: perhaps
they are right again under the circumstances: and so must be carefully
guarded. All experience, however, teaches that there is nothing so
difficult, almost so impossible to guard. This is a case in which no bars
or sentinels can save the shrine from profanation, unless the goddess
within herself will it. The supple and soured guardians, too, are often
useless; often, indeed, the intermediate agents in the very mischief
they were to guard against. And so the toy goes wrong. And then it must
be ruthlessly crushed. The men have their business, their money-making,
their ambition, their society, their religion. In their minds all these
implant counteracting ideas. And yet all these we are told are with them
sometimes feeble in comparison with the ideas that come from the blood.
How, then, can we wonder that the frailer, and more susceptible minds,
being absolutely deprived of all counteracting influences, should at
times become the victims of their susceptibility and frailty? Nor need
we be surprised that, when detected, their brothers, and fathers, and
husbands should avail themselves of the permission, given both by law
and custom, to wipe out their disgrace, by putting out of sight for ever
the cause of it. Disgrace they feel keenly; and pity is not one of their
virtues.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CAN ANYTHING BE DONE FOR THE EAST?
Well begun is half-done.
Can the oriental mind be roused into new life and activity? Can it be
made more fruitful than it has proved of late, in what conduces to the
well-being of communities, and of individuals? I see no reason why
Egypt and Syria should not, in the future, as they did in the past,
support populous, wealthy, and orderly communities, which might occupy a
creditable position, even in the modern world, in respect of that moral
and intellectual power, which is the distinguishing mark of man. But what
might bring about this desirable result among them could only be that
which has brought it about among other men.
The first requisite is security for person and property. No people were
ever possessed of this without advancing, or were ever deprived of it
without retrograding. The pursuit of property is the most universal, and
the most potent of all natural educators. It teaches thoughtfulness,
foresight, industry, self-denial, frugality, and many other valuable, if
secondary and minor virtues, more generally and effectually than schools,
philosophers, and religions have ever taught them. But where the local
Governor, and the tax-collector are the complete lords of the ascendant,
the motive to acquire property is nearly killed; and where it does in
some degree survive, it has to be exercised under such disadvantages,
that it becomes a discipline of vice rather than of virtue. Such, for
centuries, has been the condition, under the rule of the Turk, of these
by nature, in many respects, highly-favoured countries. The first step,
then, towards their recovery must be to give them what they never have
had, and never can have, we may almost affirm, under Eastern despots,
perfect security for person and property. That would alone, and in
itself, be a resurrection to life. It would lead on to everything that is
wanted.
An auxiliary might be found in (which may appear to some equally, or even
more prosaic) a larger and freer use of the printing press, that is, of
books and newspapers. This would, of course, naturally, and of itself,
follow the security just spoken of. It would, however, be desirable in
this fargone and atrophied case, if some means for the purpose could
be discovered, or created, to anticipate a little, to put even the
cart before the horse, and to introduce at once, I will not say a more
extended use, but the germ of the use, of books and newspapers. I am
afraid the effort would be hopeless, as things are now; and I know it
would spring up of itself, if things were as they ought to be. Still the
effort might be made. It is the only useful direction in which there
appears to be at present an opening for philanthropic work.
And, to speak sentimentally, what country has a more rightful claim to
the benefits of the printing press than Egypt? It is only the modern
application of the old Egyptian discovery of letters. To carry back to
Egypt its own discovery, advanced some steps farther, is but a small
acknowledgment that without that discovery none of our own progress,
nor much, indeed, of human progress of any kind, would ever have been
possible. There are a printing press, and even a kind of newspaper at
Cairo, and, of course, at Alexandria; and at Jerusalem it is possible to
get a shopkeeper’s card printed. But what is wanted is that there should
be conferred on the people, to some considerable proportion—if such a
thing be possible—the power of reading; and that there should be awakened
within them the desire to read. No efforts, I think, would be so useful
as those which might have these simple aims.
The great thing is to stir up mind. Great events and favouring
circumstances do this naturally, by self-acting and irresistible means;
and literature is one of the spontaneous fruits of the stirring of mind
they give rise to. And the work does not stop there; for literature
re-acts on the mental activity which produced it. It stimulates to still
greater exertions; and, what is more, it guides to right, and useful, and
fruitful conclusions. Perhaps it is hopeless to attempt to get literature
to do its work, when the conditions which are requisite for producing a
literature are absent, but the attempt might be made. There is nothing
else to do now.
This process is seen clearly enough in history. Look at Athens. Its
greatness produced its literature; and its literature supported and
advanced its greatness. Public life, of course, at Athens was such that
many things there gave increased power to literature; and some in a way
acted as substitutes for it. The public assemblies, the administration of
justice, the schools of philosophy, the theatres, were to the Athenians,
to a great extent, what books and newspapers are to us. They were a
machinery by which the thought and knowledge of those who, more or less
to the purpose, could think, and who had knowledge, were brought into
contact with the minds of all; so that all were put in the way of
thinking, and of attaining knowledge for themselves; and were obliged,
to some extent, to do it: and thus the thought and the knowledge of the
best men became the thought and the knowledge of all, or were, at least,
submitted to the attention of all. And so knowledge went on increasing,
and thought went on achieving fresh conquests, and Greece became the Holy
Land of mind.
Every one can see how large a share in producing the mental activity
of the Americans must be assigned to books and newspapers. Facts, and
men’s thoughts about these facts, are each day laid before the minds
of a greater proportion of the population in the United States than
elsewhere. Take away this apparatus for awakening and guiding thought,
and their wonderful mental activity would disappear. As it is, all the
counteracting influences of the rough and hard life most of them have
to live cannot repress it. Suppose as large a proportion of our own
population could read, and that they were treated in the same way—that is
to say, that an equal amount of seed was deposited in their minds, and
an equal amount of light, air, and warmth poured in—then I doubt not but
that we should see, down even to the lower strata of society, an equal
amount of mental activity.
This is a wide and fruitful subject. It is by the aid of this Egyptian
discovery of letters, and of letters only, no one other thing beneath
the sun being, without it, of any use in this matter, that the better
thought, which is the thought of a few, sometimes originally of a single
mind only, gains the upper hand of the inferior thought, which is the
thought of the many; that error, which naturally commends itself to the
ignorant, is slowly and painfully demonstrated to be error; and that
many forms of injustice, notwithstanding their hoar antiquity, the
memory of man never having run to the contrary, are shown at last to be
inhumanities. It is by their aid, and their aid only, that an inch of
good ground gained to-day, is not lost to-morrow, but kept for ever; that
hints are treasured up till what they hinted at is discovered; that what
has been observed by one man is set alongside of what has been observed
by another, till at last the fruitful conclusion grows out of the
connected view; that the experience of individuals, and of generations,
is stored up for those who are to come after; that the spark kindled
in a single mind becomes a common light. All this must be despaired of
without printed records, statements, and discussions, without books,
without newspapers; and the more largely these means for arriving at, and
conveying knowledge are used, the greater is the effect of them. If the
effect is so much when the seed is sown in ten thousand minds, it will be
proportionately greater when it is sown in ten millions.
Nothing else has done in this matter for any people, and nothing else
will do for the Egyptians and Syrians. Their circumstances, over which
we appear to have no control, may make the effort barren; but there is
nothing else we can do for them. It is ‘the one way of salvation’ for the
state in which they now are. Nothing else can bring them to see except
printed discussion, in which what is gained is retained, and what is
discredited dies away, that for one disease the dung of a black dog is
not a sovereign remedy, nor for another the dung of a white cow; and that
the only preservative against the Evil Eye is the security good laws,
well administered, give to person and property.
As to ourselves, had it not been for the assistance we received from
letters we should still have here the Druid, or some one or other of
his congeners, offering human holocausts to the accompaniment of the
approving shouts of frantic multitudes; and we should still be, at this
day, as far from the ideas of liberty of thought, and of humanity, as
Galgacus was from the conception of the steam-engine, or of the electric
telegraph.
* * * * *
The restorative, I have been prescribing, is one which must be
designedly, and, when designedly, can never be very widely, applied.
Another, however, there is, which will come spontaneously, and have
a very diffusive effect. Its germs are now quickening in the womb
of time. It is that of the outflow of western capital to the East,
accompanied by those to whom it will belong, or who will be needed for
the superintendence and direction of its employment. There is plenty the
West wants which the East can supply: cotton, silk, wool, hides, wheat,
maize, beans, peas, dried fruits, oil, &c. And, in return, the East
will take iron, copper, gold, silver, clothing, pottery, &c. The only
point that is uncertain is that of time. The trade of the East has once
already been taken possession of by Europe. Two thousand years ago it
was everywhere in the hands of the Greeks. The same kind of thing will
be seen again. But this time the invasion will consist of Englishmen,
Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians; amongst whom the irrepressible Greek
will reappear. But the future trade between the East and the West will
differ widely from the old in the amount of commodities to be produced,
and moved, and exchanged. That will be such as modern capital only could
deal with, and railways and steamboats transport. Of the dawning of
the day for the expansion of this commerce to its natural dimensions
I think there are some indications even now. The railway is beginning
to penetrate into the East. It will, before long, be seen that much we
are in want of can be produced there, at a profit, by the employment of
our capital, its employment being superintended by Europeans. Security
to person and property will accompany the employment of capital. And
then the civilization of the East will be rehabilitated, with a life
and activity it never had in the glorious days of old. The rule then
was that some one district was to conquer, devastate, and plunder all
the rest; so that, at one time, only one locality, almost only one
city, could be great and prosperous. Looking back over the past we are
misled by observing the traces only of what was mighty and magnificent;
for wretchedness, degradation, and suffering leave no monuments. The
prosperity, however, that is coming will be diffusive, and universal; for
it will be supported not by arms, loot, and extortion, but by capital,
peace, knowledge, and industry.
CHAPTER XLV.
ACHMED TRIED IN THE BALANCE WITH HODGE.
A man’s a man for a’ that.—BURNS.
You do not go through Egypt without comparing the village Achmed, who
is so often at your side, with poor Hodge, whom you left at home, but
who, nevertheless, is often in your thoughts. You ask which of the two
is better off; and which is, after all, the better man? And you ask
yourself these questions not without some misgivings, for you are pleased
with Achmed, and now that you are free from work and care, and with the
glorious world unfolding itself before you, you are disposed, when you
are reminded of him, to feel more pity than usual for poor Hodge.
They both work alike on the land all their days. The former for the
Khedivé, the latter for farmer Giles. Each of them is at the bottom of
the social hierarchy to which he belongs. These, however, are points of
resemblance only in words: the things the words stand for in the two
cases are very different. In fact, there are no resemblances at all
between them.
It is now winter. Hodge turned out this morning long before daylight.
The ground was hard frozen; but by-and-by it will all be snow-slush. He
had to look after his horses, and get down, before people began to stir,
to the town, five or six miles off, for a load of manure. Or, perhaps,
he did not get up quite so long before daylight to-day. It would have
been of no use, for he is now working in a wet ditch, up to his ankles in
mud all day long, facing a hedge bank. This is a job that will take him
three or four weeks. It is winter work, in out-of-the-way fields; and no
one will pass in sight all day. He will eat his breakfast of bread and
cheese, alone, seated on the damp ground, with his back against a tree,
on the lea-side; and his dinner of the same viands, in the same place,
and with the same company.
And what will he be thinking about all day? He will wish that farmer
Giles would only let him have one of those old pollards on the
hedge-bank. He could stay and grub it up after work of moonlight nights.
It would give a little firing, and his missus would be glad to see it
come home. Things are getting unneighbourly dear, and he will hope that
farmer Giles will raise his wages a shilling, or even sixpence a week.
But he has heard talk of lowering wages. Times are very hard, and folk
must live. He will hope that baby will soon be better; but it always was
a poor scrinchling. He will hope his wife may not be laid up this winter,
as she was last. That was a bad job. He got behind at the mill then. Tom
and Dick have been without shoes ever since, and he can’t say how the
doctor’s bill is ever to be paid. He will wish he could buy a little malt
to brew a little beer. He shouldn’t make it over-strong. He doesn’t hold
with that. He will think it can’t be far off six o’clock. He will wish
they had not done away with the old path across Crab-tree Field. It used
to save him many a step, going and coming. He minds that field well,
because when he was scaring crows in that field—he must have been going
eight years old then—the parson came along the path, and he asked the
parson, ‘Please, sir, what’s o’clock?’ and the parson gave him sixpence.
It was the first sixpence he ever got, and it was a long time before he
got another. He always says the parson gave him that sixpence, because
when the parson said, ‘What, boy, have you pawned your watch?’ he kind of
laughed. He minds, too, that the corn came up very slow that year. It was
cold times. Perhaps that was why he asked, What’s o’clock?
Poor fellow, in his life there is plenty of margin for wishes and hopes.
As he trudges home you see that his features are weather-beaten and hard.
It would not be easy to get a smile out of them; and, if it did come, it
would be rather grim. His back is bent; his gait is slouchy; his joints
are beginning to stiffen from work and rheumatism.
His life is dreary and hard, and so is his wife’s. She, too, is up before
daylight; and her candle is alight some time after he has laid down his
weary limbs, and sleep has brought him forgetfulness. She has some odd
things to do which must be done, and which she had no spare minutes for
during the day. She is now seated for the first time since five o’clock
in the morning, with the exception of the short intervals when she
snatched her humble meals. She has, unassisted, to do everything that is
done in that house, and for that family of six or seven in all. She has
to keep the house, the children, and her husband tidy. She has a weekly
wash, daily repairs, daily cooking, weekly baking; to buy all that is
wanted; to look after the sick baby, and the other children; and to look
in occasionally on her sick neighbour.
The earth is a large place, but I believe that nowhere else on the
earth’s surface can a harder-worked couple be found than Hodge and his
wife.
And what makes their hard lot still harder is the fact that they are the
only workers who never have a fête or a holiday. Our climate is such that
neither in mid-winter, nor in mid-summer, need labour be intermitted; and
our agriculture is so conducted that it cannot. The consequence is that
Hodge is held to labour all the year round. And, if he could now and then
be spared, nature here imposes upon him so many wants, and so inexorably
exacts attention to them, that he could not afford a day’s idleness from
the time when, being about eight years old, he began to scare crows, till
the day when, worn out with toil and weather, he will be laid in the
churchyard: he must be in harness every day, and all day long.
If, then, this couple have some failings (how could it be otherwise?) be
to those unavoidable failings a little kind. Think, too, that it would
be strange if such a life did not engender some virtues, and to those
virtues be fair and appreciative. They are not afraid of any kind, or of
any amount, of work. They don’t see much use in complaining. They let
other folk alone. They are self-reliant within their narrow sphere. They
think there must be a better world than this has been to them. In the
meantime they are thankful that they can work, and earn their own, and
their children’s, bread.
And here we have the true nursery of the nation. The schooling is hard,
but without it we should not be what we are. It forms the stuff out of
which Englishmen are made. It is the stuff that has made America and
Australia, and is giving to our language and race predominance in the
world. Our mental and bodily fibre is strengthened by having had to pass
through the Hodge stage.
And now we have to set Achmed by the side of Hodge. Poor Hodge! How can
there be any comparison between things so dissimilar? Achmed is a child
of the sun, that sun his forefathers worshipped, and whose symbol he sees
on the old temples. Every day of his life, and all day long, he has seen
him,
Not as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light,
pouring floods of light and gladness about him, as he pours floods of
life into his veins. The sunshine without has created a kind of sunshine
within. It has saved him from working in slushy snow, and in wet ditches,
and from all unpleasant skyey influences. It has given him plenty of
fête-days and holidays. It has made his muscles springy, his joints
supple, his step light, his eye and wits and tongue quick. As to the
rest, he might almost think that he had no master over him. He works when
and how he pleases. Still he is not without his troubles. The Khedivé,
and his people, will take all that his land produces, except the doura,
the maize, the cucumbers, and the onions that will be barely sufficient
to keep himself and his family alive. All the wheat and the beans must
go. And he will get bastinadoed into the bargain. But about that he
doesn’t trouble himself much. It always was so, and always will be so.
Besides, is it not Allah’s will? After all his wants are not great. He
scarcely requires house, fuel, or clothing. And to-day Achmed’s donkey
has been hired by the howaji, from whom he hopes to extort two rupees.
Two piastres would be plenty, but he wants the rupees particularly just
now, for he has a scheme for divorcing his present wife, as she is
getting rather old for him, and marrying a young girl he knows of in the
village; and this, one way or another, will cost him two or three pounds.
And so he is more smiling, and more attentive to the howaji, than usual.
There is however, one point of resemblance: they both end the day in
the same fashion. They light their pipes, and take their kêf. Achmed,
at these times, appears to be breathing a purer and less earthly ether
than Hodge; but that is his manner. It may be that his thoughts are less
of the grosser things of earth, the first wants of life, than Hodge’s.
But who knows? Perhaps they may be only of divorcing the old wife, and
fetching home the young one. Hodge, I believe, has the greater sense
of enjoyment as the soothing narcotic permeates his hard overstrained
fibres. Sometimes there is a half-formed thought in his mind that he is
doing his duty manfully, without much earthly notice or encouragement.
On the whole, then, I am glad to have made the acquaintance of Achmed.
I like him well. I shall always have agreeable recollections of him.
He is pleasant to look at; pleasant to deal with, notwithstanding his
extortions; pleasant to think about. But I have more respect for Hodge.
He has nothing to say for himself. If he is picturesque, it is not after
the received fashion. If his life contains a poem, it is not one that
would be appreciated, generally, either in the Eastern, or the Western,
Row. He has, however, a stout, and withal a good heart. One ought to be
the better for knowing something of his unobtrusive manly virtues. Achmed
has a gust for pleasure, in which matter he has had some training. He is
a merry fellow who will enliven your holiday. Hodge’s spiriting lies in a
different direction.
CHAPTER XLVI.
WATER-JARS AND WATER-CARRIERS.
The pitcher may go to the well often, but comes home broken at
last.—_Old Proverb._
Every drop of water that has ever been used for domestic purposes—the
waterworks of Cairo and Alexandria are innovations only of yesterday—has,
with the exception of the small quantity conveyed in goat-skins by men,
been brought up out of the river and canals by women. Their custom has
been to carry it on their heads in large earthen jars, called goollehs.
These are so large that they are capable of being formed into rafts,
which you often meet upon the river, with two men upon each steering
and punting them along. This is the way in which they are taken from
the places, where they are manufactured, to be distributed to the towns
and villages along the banks of the stream. Each weighs when full, as
near as I could tell by lifting one, about forty pounds. Wherever you
may be you see the women trooping down to the river-bank with these jars
on their heads to fetch water. Arrived at the water’s edge, each woman
tucks her short and scanty skirts between her legs, and, walking a step
or two into the stream, fills her goolleh. She then faces round to the
bank, and sets it down on the ground. The next move is to face back
again to the stream, and wash her feet. When ready to depart she receives
the assistance of the one who will go next into the water in placing the
full jar on her head. The last of the troop has no assistance. With forty
pounds weight on their heads they walk up the steep bank, and, perhaps,
a mile or two off to the village, making as light of it as if it were no
more than a chignon. The practice of carrying these weights on the head
gives an erectness to the figure, and a prominency to the chest, which
nothing else could produce.
Though I have at times smoked out a cigar while watching an incessant
stream of these women coming down to, and going up from, the
watering-place, I never heard one speak to another. I suppose they
reserve what they have to say till they can say it unobserved by the
bearded sex. Nor did I ever see one of them cast a glance upon a
stranger. I quite believe what a native told me of them—that it would be
regarded as a portent, if one of the very poorest class were in the least
to commit herself in this way. I once saw one of my companions—a tall,
good-looking young fellow—walk up to a damsel as good-looking as himself,
who had filled her goolleh, and set it on the edge of the stream till she
had washed her feet. As she turned round for it, he lifted it for her,
and placed it on her head. I narrowly watched her face. She ought to have
been somewhat taken by surprise, for she knew not that he was behind her;
but of this there was no indication. She did not look at him, or move a
feature: there was no apparent consciousness of any one being present.
The instant the jar was on her head, she walked away just as she would
have done, had it been her sister who had lifted it for her.
One is astonished at the mountains of broken crockery, or pottery,
which mark the sites of the ancient cites. That well nigh all the water
used in Egypt, for so many thousands of years, has had to be carried
in these earthen jars—for there is no wood in Egypt to make bowls and
buckets—and that the cooking utensils of the mass of the people must be
made of the same fragile material—for Egypt, except in times of unusual
prosperity, has no metals cheap enough for this purpose—will account
for no inconsiderable part of the accumulations. These shards have gone
a long way towards forming the barrows in which lie buried Abydos,
Memphis, Esné, Edfou, Thebes, Dendera, and scores of other places. The
importance, in its day, of any one of these ages-ago-effaced cities may
be roughly estimated by observing the magnitude of the barrow in which it
is buried. The mounds at Alexandria—and even already at modern Cairo—are
of surprising dimensions. Had they brought up the water from the river
in wooden buckets, which would have decayed, or had they cooked in metal
utensils—the materials of which, when they became unserviceable for
cooking, would have been turned to some other account—these mounds would
have been less conspicuous objects than they are now.
CHAPTER XLVII.
WANT OF WOOD IN EGYPT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
The trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write
them.—_Isaiah._
Egypt has no woods or thickets. It would hardly possess a single tree
without the care of man. The few it has would soon perish if that care
were intermitted. Even the palm, which we regard as the tree of the
desert, cannot exist unless it be supplied with water. The species of
the trees one meets with commonly in Egypt do not exceed half-a-dozen.
They are the large-leaved acacia, the small-leaved thorny acacia, the
tamarisk, a variety of the Indian fig, the palm, and, occasionally in
Upper Egypt, the dôm palm.
From this dearth of wood follow several obvious consequences, which
may be worth noting. First, all the houses of the lower class, that
is, of the great mass of the people of Egypt, must be built of crude,
or sun-dried brick. There is no wood for posts and planks, or to burn
brick for such folk as they. This obliges them to live in houses that
are singularly mean; and, according to our ideas, insufficient for their
purpose. They can only have a ground-floor, for no ceilings can be made
without wood. Nor, for the same reason, can they have any roofs, there
is no wood for rafters. Nor, if they could manage to get the rafters,
would they be able to get the fuel for burning the tiles. It follows
that only a part of what ought to be the roof can be covered in, and that
in the rudest way, for protection against what heaven may send in the way
of heat, or cold, or wet. This partial covering is very ineffectual. It
consists of a few palm-leaves, or of the stalks of the millet and maize,
laid horizontally from wall to wall; upon this wheat and barley straw is
generally piled till it has been consumed by the donkeys, goats, camels,
and buffaloes. Such is the rule; a real serviceable roof being the
exception. These roofless low walls, which are the house, must also be
floorless, for there is no wood either for plank-flooring, or for burning
floor-bricks. Then what does duty for the floor must be dust. This makes
every house a flea-preserve.
A further consequence is, that within these floorless, roofless,
windowless, doorless mud enclosures there can be no such thing as
furniture—nothing to sit upon, nothing to stow anything away in, nothing
to put anything upon; not a cupboard, a chair, or a table. But this
matters little to a people who can always sit, and sleep on the dry
ground; and who have nothing to stow away. Everywhere I saw men, and
sometimes even women, sleeping out of doors, even in mid-winter.
The same cause obliged the old Egyptians also to build, for all classes,
with little, or no, wood. We have just seen that the rubbish heaps of
their cities are so vast as in many instances to have completely buried
the temples, which, together with many objects of Egyptian art, have thus
been preserved for us. Of course this could not have occurred had wood
been as largely used by them, as it is by ourselves, in domestic and
public architecture. This was, also, one cause of the massiveness and
grandeur of their style of architecture.
But the consequences on the life and habits of the people of this dearth
of wood are not yet exhausted. It also puts difficulties in the way of
their cooking their food. For instance, they cannot bake their bread as
often as they would wish. A family may not have fuel enough to admit of
the recurrence of this expenditure of it more frequently than perhaps
a dozen times in the year. In order, therefore, to keep their bread
sweet, they have to cut it into thin slices, and dry it in the sun. And
to obtain a sufficiency of fuel, for even these restricted uses, they
have to collect carefully, and to turn to account, everything that can
be made to burn. As I have mentioned elsewhere, their chief resource
for this purpose are the contributions they very thankfully receive
from their herbivorous animals. A great part of the time of the women
is spent in manufacturing this material into combustible cakes. And a
shockingly dirty process it is. The raw material is deposited in a hole
in the ground, together with a great deal of water. A woman, seated on
the ground, on the brink of the hole, stirs up the material and water
with her bare arms, which are immersed to beyond the elbow. This stirring
is continued till a smooth fluid mixture has been produced, which is then
left in this state, for the water to evaporate, and to drain off through
the ground. When the material has in this way arrived at a sufficiently
tough consistency it is made into thin cakes, which are set in the sun
to dry. When this has been effected, they are stored away for use. As
might have been expected, in the apportionment of domestic duties, this
manufacture generally falls to the lot of the more ancient dames.
Those, who are curious in tracing up to their sources the customs, and
practices, of different people, may refer many other things that they
will see, and some that they will not see, in Egypt, to this dearth of
wood. In agriculture no carts, or vehicles of any kind, are used: there
is no wood of which they might be made. It is, therefore, cheaper that
everything should be carried on donkeys and camels. Here, when you see a
tree, you are looking on what may be transformed into an essential part
of the instrument of transportation. The cart, or waggon, and the animals
that are to draw it, together form the complete instrument. In Egypt,
when you see a bundle of chopped straw, and a field of lucern, you are
looking on all, out of which the Egyptian means of land transportation
are to be created. In Egypt, when a donkey has any shoes, they consist
merely of a piece of flat iron, the size of the bottom of the hoof,
cut out of a thin plate. It is easy to cut this out, but it would be
expensive, where fuel is so scarce, to forge a shoe. This list might be
very largely increased.
Nor are we here in England, three thousand miles off, unaffected by the
niggardliness of nature to Egypt in this matter. The country possesses
railroads, steamboats, and sugar, and other, factories on a large scale,
but no fuel to create for them motive power. This must come from without,
and it is all supplied from English collieries, and brought in English
vessels. In return for it we get no insignificant portion of the produce
of the valley of the Nile. How strangely are things concatenated. The
rains that fall in the highlands of Abyssinia, and in equatorial Africa,
are grinding down pebbles in the channels of mountain torrents, and
washing away the vegetable mould, and transporting their infinitesimal
water-borne particles to Egypt, for the purpose of giving employment
to the coal-miners of Durham, and to the weavers of Manchester. The
intelligence and industry of England turn to account, through the medium
of Egypt, the evaporation that takes place on the Indian and South
Atlantic oceans. Such are the working and interworking of the physical
and mental machinery of this world of ours: or rather, perhaps, we have
here some slight indication of what they will one day become.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
TREES IN EGYPT.
Divisæ arboribus patriæ.—VIRGIL.
Vegetation is the garb of nature; and no description of any region can
pretend to completeness till the trees—the most conspicuous part of the
vegetation—have been brought into view. In Egypt as each specimen of the
few species of trees commonly met with (the species may be counted on the
fingers of one hand) must be carefully looked after to be kept alive,
every particular tree comes to be regarded as beautiful, and valuable.
The knowledge the traveller has of this care and regard, which have been
bestowed upon them, enhances the interest with which he beholds them.
Besides, the trees of Egypt are entitled to a place in any description
of the country, for the additional reason, that on its level plain they
are the most marked and pleasing objects on which the eye rests. A work,
therefore, that aims at giving anything like a picture of Egypt, must
bring out, with some little distinctive prominency, the characteristics
of each species.
Among the trees of Egypt, the first place is held by the palm. On landing
at Alexandria you find it around the city in abundance, and throughout
the country you are never long out of sight of it. It is seen to most
advantage from the river against the sky. It appears most in place when,
in sufficient numbers to form a grove, it overshadows some river-side
village. You there look upon it as the beneficent friend and coadjutor of
the poor villagers. You know that it gives them much they could not get
elsewhere, and which they could ill spare—shade, boxes, baskets, cordage,
thatch, timber, and the chief of their humble luxuries, in return for the
protection and water they have given to it. We often hear it spoken of as
the queen of the vegetable world. I had rather say that it is a form of
grace, and beauty, of which the eye never tires.
The tree usually employed in forming avenues, where shade is the first
object, is the broad-podded acacia. The distinguishing feature in this
is the largeness and abundance of its singularly dark green leaves. Its
foliage, indeed, is so dense, that no ray of sunlight can penetrate
through it. The effect is very striking. In one of these avenues, that
has been well kept, you will find yourself in a cool gloom, both the
coolness, and the gloom, being such that you cannot but feel them, while
you see the sun blazing outside. The road from Boulak to the Pyramids of
Gizeh is planted the whole way with these trees. For the first two or
three miles they are of some age, and, having now met overhead above the
road, the shelter, even at mid-day, is complete. For the rest of the way
the trees are not older than the Prince of Wales’s visit, they having
been planted along the sides of the road that was on that occasion made
to do him honour, in Eastern fashion. No tree more easily establishes
itself, or grows more rapidly, if sufficiently watered. All that is
required is to cut off a limb, no matter how large, or from how old a
tree, and to set it in the ground. If it be supplied with water it grows
without fail. This acacia is the lebekh of the natives.
Another tree used in avenues, and which grows to a greater height and
with larger limbs than the lebekh, is the Egyptian sycamore. It is a
species of the Indian fig. The largeness of its limbs enables you to see
the whole of its skeleton. The skeleton of the lebekh is concealed by the
multiplicity of its branches, and the density of its foliage. There is a
fine specimen of this sycamore in the first Nubian village, on the way
from Assouan to Philæ, and another equally good on the bank of the river
just opposite Philæ. Trees of this kind have more of the appearance of
age than others in Egypt. Their bark is of a whitish colour, and their
large branches are covered with little leafless spur-like twigs, of a
dingy black, on which are produced their round green fruit, about as
big as bantams’ eggs. These spur-like processes on the branches are, I
suppose, the homologues of the descending aërial roots of its congener,
the banyan-tree of India, of which latter also I saw one or two good
specimens in gardens in Egypt. It was from the imperishable wood of the
sycamore that the ancient Egyptians made their mummy cases. The fine
old avenue from Cairo to Shoobra, three miles in length, is composed of
generally good specimens of this tree, intermingled with the acacia,
lebekh, and here and there a few tamarisks.
The tree which approaches nearest to the ability to support itself in
Egypt, without man’s aid, is the tamarisk. It is a tree that drinks
very little, and takes a great deal of killing. You see it growing as
a stunted shrub in the nitre-encrusted depressions of the desert in
the neighbourhood of Ismailia, and elsewhere, where it can only very
occasionally be refreshed by a stray shower. Wherever it can get the
little moisture, with which it is satisfied, it becomes a graceful tree.
The thorny small-leaved acacia gives but little shade. It produces a
small yellow flower, which is a complete globe, and has a sweet scent. It
is in flower at Christmas. If this is the acanthus of Herodotus, its wood
must have been largely used when he was in Egypt for the construction of
the river boats, which were often of very great capacity.
The dôm palm is occasionally seen in Upper Egypt. The first I fell in
with was at Miniéh. That, I believe, is the most northerly point at
which it is found. Its peculiarity is that, when the stem has reached
a few feet above the ground, it bifurcates. It then has two stems and
two heads. When these two stems have grown out to the length of a few
feet they, too, each of them, bifurcate, following the example of the
parent stem. There are now four stems with heads. Another repetition of
the process gives eight, and so on. In fact, it is a branching palm,
and every branch is a complete palm-tree. The whole is a cluster of
palm-trees on one stock.
These are all the trees one notices in travelling through the country.
The list is soon run through, but I saw that an attempt was being made to
add to the list. In the neighbourhood of the Viceroy’s palaces I found
two species of Australian eucalyptus. They appeared to approve of the
soil and climate, and gave promise of soon becoming fine trees. They do
well at Nice, and will probably do better in Egypt.
Every one of the trees I have mentioned remains, in Egypt, in full
foliage throughout the winter.
CHAPTER XLIX.
GARDENING IN EGYPT.
The Garden of God.—_Ezekiel._
That horticulture was a favourite occupation among the ancient Egyptians
is shown abundantly by their sculptures and paintings. Representations
of gardens are so common, that we may infer that no residence, of any
pretensions, was considered complete without one. We even see that rare
and interesting plants, brought from Asia and Ethiopia, each with a ball
of earth round the roots, carefully secured with matting, formed at
times a part of the royal tribute. The very lotus, which may be regarded
as, among flowers, the symbol of Pharaohnic Egypt, is now supposed to
have been an importation from India. In this matter, as in every other
respect, the country has sadly retrograded.
Their style of gardening was stiff and formal. Straight lines were much
affected. Angles did not displease. Basins, or pools, of water were _de
rigueur_. Every plant, or tree, was carefully trimmed, and trained. It
could not have been otherwise. This was all settled for them by the
aspects of Egyptian nature, the character of their religion, and their
general manners and customs. As is the case among modern Orientals,
flowers were not valued so much for their form and colouring, as for
their odour.
The European of to-day, as he looks upon the sculptured and painted
representations of Egyptian gardens of three or four thousand years
ago, at which date his own ancestors were living in caves, from which
their ancestors had expelled races of animals now extinct, finds that,
notwithstanding the barbarism of his ancestors, and the recentness of
his civilization, there have come to be reproduced in himself ideas and
sentiments, which were giving grace and finish to the highly organized
society which had been established then, no one can tell for how long
a period, on the banks of the Nile. At all events he beholds in these
Egyptian gardens a curious instance of an interesting and instructive
similarity between the two; for he sees that the Egyptian of that day,
just like the Englishman of to-day, took pleasure in watching, and
controlling, the life and growth of plants; in tending them, because
they tasked, and were dependent on, his thought and care; in making
them minister to a refined and refining taste for the beautiful; and in
creating by their aid, within the limits in such matters assigned to man,
a kind of artificial nature.
Of course all sub-tropical, and many tropical, trees and plants do well
here, if only they be regularly supplied with water. I never saw more
interesting gardens, on a small scale, than those of S. Cecolani at
Alexandria, and of the American Consul at Port Saïd. The same may be
said of the garden of the Viceroy at his Gezeerah palace. In them you
will find the plants we keep in stove houses doing well in the open
air, and many of them in flower at Christmas, or soon after. In the
first-mentioned of these gardens I saw very beautiful specimens of the
Norfolk Island pine, about thirty feet high, growing luxuriantly. There
was also a species of solanum, which, if I knew its Christian name, I
would commend to the attention of those who are endeavouring to produce,
in their English gardens, something of a sub-tropical effect. It was
about ten feet high, and was so regularly filled up with branches, as to
have a completely symmetrical, a somewhat dome-like, form. Its leaves
were large, rough, and prickly. At the extremity of each twig, or lesser
branch, was a large branching spike of purple flowers. The individual
flowers in the spikes of bloom were about the size of the flower of
its relative, the common potato, and similar in shape. It was a most
effective shrub. I never saw one more so.
It is generally supposed amongst us that our English gardens are quite
unrivalled. They may be in the thought, care, and money bestowed upon
them; but in variety of interest they are very inferior to Egyptian
gardens. These may contain all the plants we consider most beautiful and
most worthy of artificial heat; which, too, may be grouped with bamboos,
palms, Indian figs, bananas, cactuses, daturas, poinsettias nine or ten
feet high, and many other plants and trees one would go some way to see
growing with the freedom and luxuriance they exhibit in this bright,
winterless climate, in which the transparent sunlight is never the mere
mocking garb of a withering Liebig-extract of East wind.
CHAPTER L.
ANIMAL LIFE IN EGYPT.—THE CAMEL.
An omne corpus habeat suum ubi?—LEMMA.
In representing the natural scene animal must be associated with
vegetable life. The two, in their double relation first to each other,
and then to the peculiarities of the region that has shaped their
characters, constitute the chief features of the natural panorama. A
picture, that would exhibit this in a manner suitable to the object of
these pages, will not require either complete comprehensiveness, or much
minuteness of detail: such a method of treating the subject would belong
to science. What is here required is that those forms only should be
signalized which possess in their beauty, numbers, utility, history, or
in some way or other, what will interest everybody. They must, in short,
be regarded here rather from the human than from the scientific point of
view.
The form, then, which first attracts the eye of the traveller in Egypt,
is the camel, which, strange enough, the ancient Egyptians, either from
an antipathy to the animal, or from some other cause unknown, excluded
from their paintings and sculptures. If this antipathy originated in
religious ideas, was it because the animal appeared to them, as we may
easily suppose it might, preternaturally unclean? Or was it because it
presented itself to them as the companion, and servant, of their hated
Semitic neighbours? But whatever may have been the reason of their
repugnance to it, their descendants, who, however, are at least equally
the descendants of their Semitic neighbours, do not participate in the
feeling. No sooner are you landed at Alexandria than you have the camel
before you. Previously, while you were yet on the way, it had occupied a
place in your anticipations of the East; and, now that it meets you at
every turn, you are never weary of looking at it.
As it steps by you mark its wide, deliberate, noiseless stride. You
observe that the head of the tall slim Arab who walks by its side only
reaches half way up its shoulder. Its long neck is elevated and stretched
forward. It neither seeks, nor flinches from notice. In its eye there is
no wonder, or eagerness, or fear. It is carrying its head horizontally,
with its upper lip drawn down. In this drawn-down lip, and in its whole
demeanour, there is an expression of contempt—of contempt for the modern
world. You can read its thoughts, ‘I belong,’ it is saying to itself,
for it cares nothing about you, still you can’t help understanding it,
‘I belong to the old world. There was time and room enough then for
everything. What reason can there be in all this crowding and hastening?
I move at a pace which used to satisfy kings and patriarchs. My fashion
is the old-world fashion. That world did well enough without railways
and telegraphs. Before the pyramids were thought of it had been settled
what my burden was to be, and at what pace it was to be carried. If any
of these unresting pale-faces (what business have they with me?) wish
not to be knocked over, they must get out of my way. I give no notice
of my approach; I make way for no man. What has the grand and calm old
world come to! There is nothing anywhere now but noise, and pushing,
and money-grubbing.’ And every camel that you will meet will be going
at the same measured pace, holding its head in the same position, with
the same composed look, drawing down its lip with the same contempt, and
soliloquizing in the same style.
In Alexandria this anachronism of an animal appears to be chiefly
employed in carrying goods to and from the harbour, and in bringing
forage into the city. This consists mainly of fresh-cut lucern, the
historical forage-plant of the East, and of chopped straw—always chopped,
and always carried in rope nets made of the fibres of the palm. It is
always the same, because in the East there are never two ways of doing
anything. As to this chopped straw, it is difficult to say how it comes
to pass that the small fractions of it do not fall through the large
meshes of the rope net; and that the net itself, with its contents,
always retains the same rectangular form. These rope nets are used also
on the river for forming the stacks of chopped straw one sees floating
down the stream on boats.
On leaving Alexandria for Cairo you begin to see the camel in the fields.
In that first journey in Egypt everything is new, and strange, and
interests. Sometimes he is at plough, with a buffalo, or cow, or ass, for
a mate. Sometimes he is tethered in a piece of lucern. From the absence
of enclosures all animals are tethered in Egypt.
In Cairo you see more camels than in Alexandria. They stalk along in
Indian file, not swerving an inch from the direct line, full in the
middle of the street. In Jerusalem I counted as many as two-and-twenty in
line, all roped together, tail and head. This is necessary there, where
the streets are so narrow, that if the train of beasts were not thus
vertebrated into the form of a single reptile, it would be impossible
to keep them together. They bring into Cairo, besides forage, all the
wood, and fuel, and grain consumed in the city, and the stone, too, that
is used for building. All Cairo has in this way been carried on camels’
backs.
As you ascend the river you are never long without seeing a camel, or a
string of camels, on the bank. As you look up at them, for at the season
when you are in Egypt the river has subsided many feet, their long legs
and long necks, seen from your boat against the sky, appear longer than
they have been really made by nature, and you think that you are looking
upon some arachnoid creatures, of the megatherium epoch, moving along the
bank. At Siout, where the caravan road from Darfur, through the great
Oasis, strikes the Nile, I saw a whole kafileh of camels that had just
arrived. They were all down on the ground, on their bellies, a hundred or
more of them, and filled the great market place. Their owners were busy
taking off and inspecting their precious loads. It was to us a strange
scene as we threaded our way through the midst of them. Some made an
angry noise, and snapped at us with their ugly mouths. I know not what
disturbed their equanimity. They might have been, by the grace of nature,
exceptionally malcontent; or it might have been the sight of the Frank
dress, or the absence of the odour of the Arab dress, that irritated them.
Camels, like horses, are of many colours, black, white, mouse-colour of
varying shades, and rusty red of varying shades. The coat, indeed, of all
domesticated animals, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, donkeys, pigs, as also
the feathers of our gallinaceous poultry, and even the human hair, appear
to acquire a tendency to vary into these colours; of which, however, in
the camel none are glossy and bright. As they do not lie on their sides,
their packs and saddles are often left on all night. I have seen a long
string of camels at midnight all resting on their bellies on the ground,
and all still saddled, just as they had been during the day. The long
manger, out of which they were eating their chopped straw, was also laid
on the ground; and so was the Arab in charge of them. The fire, too, by
which he was sleeping, was fed, like his camels, with chopped straw.
The camel is one of the cheapest of all means of land carriage. Its load
is six hundredweight. In Syria you frequently see their loads lying in
the middle of the road, while the animals themselves have been let go
on the hill, or the roadside waste, to pick up a feed from the almost
sapless and often thorny bushes; this costs nothing. One driver manages
several, and his keep costs little. This, and the original cost of the
animal, are all the outgoing in the half-desert tracts through which the
caravans generally make their way. He lasts in work eighteen or twenty
years.
At Assouan, for the first time in ascending the river, you find that
you are expected yourself to mount a camel, for the ride across the bit
of desert to Philæ. For weeks you have been observing that the Arab on
his back is jerked forward at every stride, and so you say, perhaps, to
yourself, ‘Now for a ride on a camel; but I wonder whether my vertebræ
will be dislocated. I wonder whether I shall be able to sit with my legs
crossed over the creature’s neck! Perhaps I shall be pitched off as he
jerks himself up from the ground!’ All that are for hire are down on
their bellies on the bank. You jump on the one that has the best saddle,
because you argue that the man, who can afford the best saddle, can
probably afford the best beast; and that it would be unreasonable to put
a good saddle on a bad beast. You jump on jauntily, as if you had been
to the manner born. As you are crossing your legs before the front crotch
of the saddle, up goes the beast. You are jerked forward, and get a dig
in the stomach from the front crotch. Then you are jerked backwards, and
get a dig from the hind crotch in your back. You steady yourself, and
think those digs might have been bad, but so far all right. You observe
that you are very high up in the air. The earth seems a long way off. But
now for the desert on a camel.
A slender-limbed Nubian lad, to show his zeal, and that he is up to his
work, immediately begins to beat the beast with a long stick. You don’t
like the pace, and so you think him an imp of darkness, or the near
relative of an African monkey. You submit for a few minutes, but the
tossings up (you have no stirrups, and your legs are crossed) and the
jerks backwards and forwards are bad, and you don’t know how far it will
go, and so you call out, ‘You little Afreet, leave the beast alone!’
This is said with a sweep of your stick towards him. He dodges off with
a grin. You are not disposed to laugh. Ina moment he is back again like
a fly. He will keep his camel up to the front if he can. But you soon
get accustomed to the swing. As you notice that the desert is strewn
with sharp angular pieces of granite of all sizes, some jutting through
the sand, some lying loose on the surface, you again feel, as you did
at first, that you are very far up above the earth. The sun is blazing
overhead. A thermometer on the sand registers 140 degrees. There is,
however, a pleasant breeze. You are not long in getting to Philæ. You are
surprised that the distance has been done in so short a time. You get
back to Assouan in the evening not at all dissatisfied with your ride on
a camel. The next day you repeat the same journey in the same way. It
has lost its novelty, and you take it as a matter of course, and even
expect to find it pleasant. You go as much for the sake of a second day
on a camel as for Philæ itself. You now wish you could spare time for a
trip to the great Oasis on camel-back. Ever afterwards you talk of the
camel with an air of authority, as if you had been bred in tents.
CHAPTER LI.
THE ASS.—THE HORSE.
The asses be for the king’s household.—_II. Samuel._
The camel is, of course, the most characteristic feature of the animal
life of the East. The ass comes next. The camel has no known history,
except in connexion with man; for there is not sufficient evidence to
justify the belief, that he has ever been seen, in a state of nature,
on the elevated deserts of Central Asia; where one cannot but suppose
that it would be impossible for him to exist, during the winter, in the
open. But the ass once was free, and some tribes to this day retain the
primæval freedom in their aboriginal Eastern home. All, however, of the
race the ordinary traveller now sees are the slaves of man. Though in the
order both of utility and picturesqueness the ass comes after the camel,
still he deserves prominent notice, for he is everywhere—in the field,
in the village, in the city. In Egypt ubiquity is one of his attributes.
Universal adaptation, out of which his ubiquity grows, is another. He is
the mount of the rich, and of the poor, of man, woman, and child. His
lot varies, as does the lot of those he serves. The rich man’s ass is a
lordly beast. In size, he is far ahead of anything of his kind we see
here at home. His coat is as smooth and glossy as a horse’s—the face, of
course, having been put on by the scissors as well as by grooming. His
livery is shiny black, satiny white, or sleek mouse-colour. I never saw
one of the dingy red of his Poitou brethren. He carries a grand saddle,
resplendent with many-coloured fringes, and with a wondrous stuffed
pommel of red morocco, eight or more inches high, like a bolster laid
before you. The head and reins are decorated. It is a magnificent get-up,
and the animal himself is worthy of it all. Many of this sort cost more
than a hundred pounds. His hide has never been chafed, nor his spirit
broken by ill-usage. He is always left as nature made him, and is not
vicious withal. I saw one, at a rich man’s door at Alexandria, so like an
unusually fine cob pony, that it took the friend, who happened to be with
me, and myself a second look to assure ourselves that he was an ass. He
might, however, not have been an Egyptian, for I never saw another at all
like him in form or colour. He was of a dark rusty dun.
Such are high caste donkeys. There are, however, low caste donkeys—very
low, indeed, and these are far the most numerous. Whatever is good in
the appearance, and happy in the lot, of their well-placed brothers is
reversed in theirs. They are poor men’s slaves—a proverbially miserable
condition even, as Homer tells us, in the heroic days of Hellas. Puny,
unkempt, ill-fed, overloaded, overworked, with shocking raws on their
flanks and backs, which never cease through life to wring and rack, till
they can be burdened and beaten no more, what a blessed consummation
must it be for them, when they are pushed off the path, or driven out of
the gate, to feed the dogs and vultures—a feast, indeed, which would,
to these guests, be a grievous disappointment, had not long experience
taught them to be, on such occasions, very moderate in their expectations.
The thought of the life-long sufferings of these _âmes damnées_ of the
humble fellow-workers of man troubles my recollections of the East.
I used to flinch from the sight of one of them—a sight as common as
disturbing. I feel now, as I then knew that I should feel always, that
either in this world, though its currents are so corrupt, or in that
which is to come, where the offence will stand in its true light,
retribution must overtake me for having used poor beasts of this kind,
though not yet fallen into quite the lowest depths. That it was up the
country, where nothing else could be got, much as I wish for something to
palliate the act, cannot, I know, be admitted as a justification. While
my heart was bleeding at the sight of these sufferings, I could find no
anodyne but the old Egyptian belief in the transmigration of souls. The
poor wretches must, I tried to think, be expiating the crimes of a former
life. They once were rich Legrees, or devout bankers, who had robbed
widows and orphans, or holy fathers, who had kept eunuchs to sing the
praises of the Creator.
What a benefactor would he be who could satisfy us on this point—who
could demonstrate the thing to us. We should then no longer be maddened
at the thought of the iniquities of man, nor harrowed at the sight of the
sufferings of the brute. The one would cancel the other.
THE HORSE.
Little need be said of the horse in Egypt. He is not remarkable there
for size or beauty, nor does he obtrude himself much on the traveller’s
notice. Out of Cairo and Alexandria he is not frequently seen, and in
those cities he generally appears in harness, drawing, always in pairs,
the multiform public vehicles which have been culled, one would suppose,
from all parts of Europe. He is seldom seen in good condition, unless
he comes from the stable of the Viceroy, or of some grandee, a governor
or pasha, or of some rich European resident. Taking the whole country,
the number of them in good case would thus not be great. He suffers from
his double competition with the ass and the camel; and from the absence,
except in a few towns, of the use of wheeled vehicles. He is also
affected injuriously by the dearness of his keep, compared with that of
his competitors for man’s favour; barley and clover being indispensable
for him. All this reduces him to the degrading position of selling for
less than, at present not half as much as, a good donkey. A fair horse
might have been purchased last spring for twenty, or even fifteen pounds.
He is seldom more than fourteen hands high. With a tall Arab on his back,
he looks too small for a cavalry horse. It is his great merit to be
better than he looks. He is very docile, very hardy, and can go through a
great deal of work. Trotting is not one of his paces. Egypt used to have
a celebrated breed of horses of its own, but that is now nearly extinct.
CHAPTER LII.
THE DOG.—THE UNCLEAN ANIMAL.—THE BUFFALO.—THE OX.—THE GOAT AND THE
SHEEP.—FERÆ NATURÆ.
Nobis et cum Deo et cum animalibus est aliqua
communitas.—LACTANTIUS.
The dog has, in the East, been spurned from the companionship of man.
He is no longer allowed to guard a master’s property, or to be the
playfellow of his children. He has been expelled from the home, and
the door has been closed against him; every contumely has been heaped
upon him; religion has pronounced him unclean, and his contact double
defilement.
But centuries of ill-usage have not obliterated nature. He cannot
divest himself of his old, hereditary, unreasoning feelings of eternal
dependence, and fidelity. Man has, it is true, with injurious harshness,
renounced the compact first indented in some distant age, perhaps in some
remote northern clime; but the dog neither makes retort, nor claims his
liberty. He remains faithful to his part of the broken bond. Only let
him be near his old master, allow him no more companionship than to see
him pass by, and he will bear all the scorn, and all the hardnesses, of
his cruel lot, and will ever be forward to do him any service, however
unhonoured. And so it is that he has become homeless and masterless, the
scavenger, and the knacker, of eastern cities.
Among wild animals, every individual, or if the species be gregarious,
every association of individuals, has its own beat, which is as much its
own property as a landed estate is the property of its human owner. In
this we have the germ, and the rationale, of the human developments of
the natural necessity, and idea of property. Each of these beats is an
appropriated hunting ground. Any outsider who appears within its limits
is an invader, and is treated as such. So it is with the dogs of a large
eastern city. They are divided into associations, and each association
occupies its own district of the city. If a dog sets his foot beyond the
boundaries of his own district, he is instantly attacked by those whose
district he has invaded. An alarm is given, and all concerned rush to
drive off the intruder, who is often seriously mauled. These raids, and
their repulses, generally take place at night. To sybarite travellers,
and to those who take no interest in the life of the world around them,
the canine uproar caused in these affairs is simply insufferable. The
growling is certainly very harsh: you might think it issued from the
throats of packs of hyænas. Many of these dogs are badly wounded, we may
infer, from one another’s teeth in these night rows, because if such
results do not ensue, for what earthly purpose do they make all this
uproar? It would then be made out of pure _cussedness_, which one cannot
believe of them.
I never saw a bitch with more than two pups—seldom with more than one.
I supposed some inhabitant of the district had knocked the rest of the
family on the head, to prevent the pack becoming too numerous.
If a dog in the interior of the city makes himself disagreeable, he is
taken up by the scruff of the neck, and carried outside the city. He is
never known to return again to his old haunts: in fact, he is unable to
do so, being always hindered by those in possession of the intervening
districts from passing through them. He thus remains on the outside of
the city, an outcast from the dog community, a pariah among dogs, for the
rest of his days.
They never show any disposition to molest one in the day-time; at night,
however, it is always necessary to go about provided with a good stick,
for they will then scarcely ever allow a Frank to pass without assailing
him, if not with their teeth, at all events with their tongues. The
town dogs are about the size of our English pointers, but with longer
coats, generally of a yellowish colour. The tail is somewhat bushy.
The village dogs are larger and much fiercer. They are dark brown or
black. Their size, courage, and social position improve as the river is
ascended. I met a Scotchman, who carried his dislike, and fear, of these
ill-used animals so far, that he never went out, night or day without a
revolver, or a kind of fire-arm, of German manufacture, which goes off
without a report. He boasted of the hecatombs he had slain—perhaps more
had been maimed than slain—during his residence in the country. At one
time he had cleared off so many in the quarter of the city in which he
was living, that the natives, inferring from the number of dead dogs
found in the neighbourhood of his house that it was his doing, laid a
complaint against him before the cadi for canicide. He was admonished to
abstain for the future from taking the life of, or wounding, useful and
unoffending animals.
Although the Arab can give the dog no place in his affections, nor allow
him the smallest familiarity, yet in his treatment of him you may trace
the working of a sort of compassionate kindliness. He sets up for him
water-troughs about the city; and I often observed a poor man, as he ate
his scanty meal, throw a morsel to a canine mendicant, probably, and if
so not misthinkingly, in the name of God.
THE UNCLEAN ANIMAL.
The unclean animal often divides with the dogs the scavengering of the
towns. The part assigned him is the part the dogs’ stomachs will not
allow them to undertake. Outside the city a herd of swine is generally
to be seen on the filth-heap. It was there I saw them, at Alexandria,
Jerusalem, and elsewhere. A few solitary stragglers only are met with
in the streets. Of all that is hideous-looking, and hideously filthy, I
never beheld anything worse than these eastern town pigs: long-snouted,
long-legged, long-haired, ridge-backed, mangy, bespattered with grime. I
could hardly have supposed that there had been in the nature of things
such disgusting organisms. A sense of loathing sickens you as you see
them. But we must not be hard on the helpless brute: is it not more
shocking that man, endowed with large discourse of reason, with sovereign
power to distinguish wrong from right, the lord, the soul, the very
blossom of this visible world, bid to look with the inward eye, as he
has been enabled to do with the bodily eye, onwards and upwards, should,
notwithstanding, still make himself a hog, morally a scavenger? And this
position has been forced by necessity on the swine of the East—they did
not turn to it from choice.
Christian travellers in the East, who will eat swine’s flesh, buy it from
the Greeks. That it was sold by a Greek is no guarantee that it is food
for a dog. Day after day I saw at Jerusalem a Greek boy tending a herd
of swine on the filth-heap outside the Jaffa gate. Hard by, against
the wall, were sitting a row of noseless, toothless, handless, footless
lepers. It was a sight, this combination of animal and human debasement,
to make one shudder. But as to those ordure and garbage consuming
organisms on the filth-heap: the chemistry of nature can work wonders,
but those wonders have a limit. It cannot transmute that filth into human
food. As well might you dine on a rat taken from a sewer, or a vulture
caught in the ribbed cavity of a camel it was busy in eviscerating. It
were all one to sup with the ghouls.
In this matter it is entirely, from first to last, a question of climate,
and, through climate, of vegetation. In this part of the world we have a
moist climate, and, as a consequence, we have woods, supplying acorns,
beech-mast, and other sylvan fruits; and the same cause gives us grassy
meadows, and clover-fields, where pigs can graze. And we have abundance
of roots and corn, and much refuse garden-stuff; which all comes to this,
that in these latitudes nature and man supply the pig, all the year
round, with abundance of clean and wholesome food. In the East nature has
withheld every one of these gifts. There are no woods, no meadows; and
for him no roots, no fruits. Throughout Egypt, with the small exception
of some uncultivated marshes in the Delta and Faioum, there is not a
mouthful of food for pigs. They must, therefore, become scavengers of
towns, or make their exit altogether from the scene. People are very poor
in these parts; and those among the Greeks whose poverty suggests to them
the idea of making a few piastres by keeping pigs cannot, of course, be
well off. The supposition, then, that such people will always buy corn,
costly to them, and of which they are in need themselves, for pigs that
other people are to eat, is Utopian.
America could not have been settled without the pig; but then the pig has
in America a perennial feast of good things. It is the pig’s paradise.
The country is under forest. Wood-nuts, and wild fruit of several sorts,
are everywhere. Peaches, and maize, and many other things good enough
for his betters, are in inexhaustible abundance. Here in England it is
one of the luxuries of having a little bit of land, that you never need
be without pig, in one form or another, in the house. Besides it is
the only animal a cottager can keep. Nothing else is within his reach.
Liebig tells us, too, that for those who are exposed to the cold and damp
climate of this part of the world, no food is so suited as bacon; and the
more oleaginous the better.
In the East the law-givers were right who made religion ban piggy. They
could not reason with the multitude on a point of this kind. They could
not make distinctions and exceptions. When you have to do with a hungry
stomach reason does not go for much. Of course they did not take into
consideration the opposite circumstances of other parts of the world.
What would be good for us here was no concern of theirs.
THE BUFFALO.
The buffalo, if it were only for his uncouthness, ought not to be
unnoticed here. He has, however, another claim to a place in our picture,
from his so frequently coming into view. He is hardier, and heavier,
than the ox, and has, therefore, to a great extent, taken its place
both at the plough, and at the water-wheel. The Egyptian buffalo has
no resemblance to the brawny-shouldered, shaggy-maned, clean-legged,
American prairie bison, injuriously miscalled a buffalo. What our
Egyptian’s hairless, slate-coloured carcass is most like is that of some
ill-shaped primæval pachyderm. You would hardly take him for a congener
of the ox, even after you had noticed his horns; such horns as they are,
for they are so reflexed, and twisted, as to give you the idea that
something must have gone wrong with them, till you find that they are
alike in all. The little buffalo calf, by the side of its ugly, dull,
soulless dam, seems a far more creditable piece of nature’s handicraft.
You can hardly believe that a few months will metamorphose it into such
ugliness.
THE OX.
Of the existing ox so little is seen that nothing need be said here,
except that it is a diminutive specimen of its kind; and that it gives
dry, stringy beef. It was different in the time of the old Egyptians.
They had (what had they not?) a polled breed as well as long-horns, and
also some breeds that were curiously-marked. But both bull and cow were
then divine. The latter was sacred to Athyr, the Venus of Egypt. The
former was worshipped as the symbol of strength, and of the generative
powers of nature; and, besides, his quiet rumination suggested the idea
of the sufficiency, and wisdom, of reflective meditation. Since they
ceased to be divine the couple have much degenerated.
THE GOATS AND THE SHEEP.
In Egypt the goats and the sheep, as is the case with their betters, are
not separated from each other. In outward appearance, too, as respects
size, colour, shape, and coat, there is not much difference between
them, nor is there much difference between their mutton. This is not an
instance, as some have suggested, of evil communications having corrupted
good mutton, but the result of similarity of food. The Egyptian sheep
have no mountain wild thyme, and no short sweet herbage to crop. The
weeds, and the dry acrid plants on the edge of the desert, are all that
Nature provides for them, and these they have to divide with the goats.
The sourness of the food is what imparts to the mutton its twang; and
then their wool is long and oily, and this oiliness of the wool must aid
the ill effects of the food. I found, however, little reason to complain
of the mutton, when I compared it with the beef. The goats supply the
greater part of the milk, and of the butter, used in the country. Goats’
butter is as white as paper; in this respect resembling the butter of the
cows of the American prairies. Neither sheep nor goats are larger than an
ordinary-sized Newfoundland dog. They are generally of a rusty black, or
smutty red colour.
FERÆ NATURÆ.
As to the _Feræ Naturæ_, Egypt offers little cover or feeding-ground for
them. I saw none but jackals and foxes. They can, therefore, have no
place in a traveller’s sketch of the country. The crocodile is all but
extinct below the cataract. The steamboat it is, which in this part of
the river, is scaring it away.[9] Formerly, both the crocodile and the
hippopotamus appear to have disported themselves even in the Delta.
CHAPTER LIII.
BIRDS IN EGYPT.
The cawing Rooks, and Kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud,
The Jaye, the Pie, and e’en the boding Owl
Have charms for me.—COWPER.
In the picture of Nature the birds’ place must not be left quite in
blank. The first to greet you in Egypt are two familiar home companions.
As you near the harbour of Alexandria—and even sometimes before you
sight the land—the wagtail comes on board, and, without a moment lost in
reconnoitring, begins to look about the deck for crumbs. He flirts his
tail as usual. Here, in our bird-persecuting part of the world, it means
that he is on the alert; but on the deck of the steamer, that is entering
the harbour of Alexandria, it means, ‘All right. I am not afraid: I am
quite at home. Every one here is glad to see me, and I am glad to see
you. Here no boys throw stones at me.’ Every flirt of his tail sends a
little ripple of pleasure over your heart.
On entering Alexandria your only thought is of what is new and strange:
the last that would occur to you would be that you were about to
encounter an old friend. But the first object that meets your eye, as
you step through the custom-house gate into the street, is a very
old cosmopolitan friend you left in London a few weeks back—the house
sparrow. ‘What!’ you exclaim. ‘You here, you ornithological gamin?’
As you go by rail to Cairo, and as you ascend the river, you are never
long out of sight of a mud-built village. The saddest and sorriest of
habitations for men and women are these Egyptian villages I have ever
anywhere seen. West India negro huts are better-furnished abodes. Their
best-lodged inhabitants are the pigeons. The only storey that is ever
raised above the ground-floor—which is of the ground as well as on it—is
the dovecot. This, therefore, is the only object in a village which
attracts the eye of the passer-by. In the Delta the fashion appears to
be to raise a rude roundish mud tower, full of earthenware pots for the
pigeons to breed in. These are inserted—of course, lying horizontally—in
the mud of which the tower is built. In Upper Egypt these towers have
assumed the square form, about twelve feet each side. Three or four
tiers of branches are carried round the building for the pigeons to
settle on; these are stuck into the wall, and as the branches depart
from the straight line, each according to its own bent, each belt of
branches presents a very irregular appearance. No village is without
its dovecotes. From the summit of the propylæa of the grand Ptolemaic
temple of Edfou, I counted about forty of these dovecotes on the tops of
the mud hovels below me. The number of domestic pigeons in Egypt must
be several times as great as that of the population. I suppose if they
kept pigs they would not keep so many pigeons. They must consume a great
quantity of corn—more, perhaps, than would be required for the pigs of a
pig-eating population as large as that of Egypt.
In going up the river from Cairo, the first birds that put in their
appearance are the pelicans. They are generally in parties of eight or
ten. They are fishing, in a line across the stream. They always keep out
of gun-shot. They loom large, showing about the size of swans, and, as
seen from a distance, of the colour of cygnets. They do not care to go
more than about two hundred miles above Cairo.
All up the river you see herons of several species: like their English
congeners, they are patient watchers for passing fish; and when watching,
more or less solitary.
The wet sand and mud banks are thronged with countless mobs of ducks
of various kinds, of geese, and of other aquatic birds. Experience has
taught them also how far guns carry.
As to the geese, you frequently hear and see overhead large flights
of them. Sometimes as many as four or five flocks are in sight at one
time. They are going to and from their feeding grounds. When aloft they
are generally in some figure; but very far from always, as some say, in
the form of a wedge. Perhaps the figure in which they place themselves
depends on the currents of wind where they are. If they are driving
against the wind, the wedge would of course be the best figure for
them to move in; but if they are going down the wind a line one deep
would be better, as it would give the full help of the current to every
individual of the flock; and this is a figure they are often seen in.
In the lately disinterred temple of Serapis, between the dilapidated
pyramids of Sakkarah, and the marvellous catacomb of the sacred bulls, I
saw, in painted relief, a scene which tells us how geese were fattened
in old Egypt. Men are seated at each end of a table which is covered
with pellets, probably of some kind of meal. Each man has a goose in his
lap, down the throat of which he is cramming one of these pellets. The
priests of Serapis liked their geese fat.
In the neighbourhood of Siout I saw several flocks of flamingoes on the
wing. As they approached with the sun upon them, they showed like discs
of silver, supported on black wings. When they had passed, the eye was
charmed with their backs of rosy pink.
Among the land birds the commonest in the village palm groves are the
Egyptian turtle-dove, and the hopoe. Where there are so many pigeons
you might expect a great many hawks: these you see of several species.
Larks are everywhere in the fields. You frequently fall in with bevies of
quail, and with plovers. A small owl is common: I heard and saw it during
the day-time, in the tamarisks near the pool in the sacred enclosure of
Karnak, and elsewhere.
Our English rook—it has a wide range, being a denizen of Africa as well
as of every part of Europe—appears among the birds of Egypt. My bedroom
at Zech’s, late Shepheard’s, Hotel at Cairo was off the back gallery,
looking across a road on to a large garden. Exactly opposite the window
was the sakia which supplied the garden with water. The creaking and
shrieking, every morning, of its lumbering wooden wheel whilst it was
being worked by a patient, plodding bullock, was far from unpleasant
to one who wished to become acquainted with the sights and sounds of
Egypt. In this garden were many palms. These were tenanted by a colony
of rooks. I was, day after day, interested in noting that they had just
the same bearing and manners as their English relatives. Like them, they
sought the society of man, and seemed to watch his doings with the same
kind of satisfied observation, accompanied with the same harsh cries,
expressive of security and confidence. They were in every respect quite
undistinguishable from our London rooks, and those that affect our rural
homesteads. I looked upon them with the thought that just as we, at this
day, are pleased with their social and familiar ways, so must, many
thousand years ago, have been the old Egyptians.
The banks of the river are full of bird life, as every bird in Egypt must
daily come to the river to drink.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE EGYPTIAN TURTLE.
Cum ventre humano tibi negotium est, qui nec ratione mitigatur,
nec prece ullâ flectitur.—LIVY.
It is hard lines for an Egyptian turtle when he once gets turned on his
back in Aboukir Bay. After that, for the remaining term of his natural
life, it is all Ramadan with him, after sunset as well as after sunrise.
He is carried to Alexandria, and sold there, if a fine well-grown
reptile, for half a sovereign: the smaller reptiles go for less. He is
put on board a P. and O. boat, and carried to Southampton, all the way on
his back, for another half sovereign. Add to this whatever one may have
to pay for his railway journey, and you may take him home with you, and
two or three more with him for your friends, at no great cost. Though
perhaps it would be hardly worth while to give a turtle to one who knows
no other way of having him cooked than converting him into soup.
Something ought to be done, and might be done to mitigate their long fast
from Aboukir Bay to London. At sea, gourmandizing is the order of the
day; but the turtle on board are famishing all the while. It might not
be ill done, if those, whose only occupation is eating, and then eating
again, were to give a thought to the difference in this matter between
themselves and those of their fellow-travellers who are getting nothing
at all to eat. It makes the matter worse that we inflict starvation on
the very creature we are contemplating as a feast for ourselves. It is no
justification to say, learnedly, that Chelonians can dispense with food
for long periods. It is bad for all concerned. It is morally hardening
to those who inflict unnecessary suffering, and to those—the passengers
on the P. and O. boats—who witness its effects, progressing regularly
from day to day. As the poor wretches lie on their backs—there were about
fifty on board the boat I came home by—you see that the plastron, that is
the name the belly shell goes by, is changing its shape. At first it is
convex. It gradually, as the fasting is prolonged, loses its convexity,
and becomes flat. This must be bad, but there is worse yet to come. Times
goes on, and what had become flat, begins to sink, and becomes concave.
The fifty owners of these shrinking and subsiding stomachs must have
found the process very pinching: and the more so as they had nothing else
in particular to think about while lying all this time on their backs.
The alterations of shape they have been passing through measured their
sufferings. They had never themselves done anything so bad to what they
had fed on. How could they without reason?
CHAPTER LV.
INSECT PLAGUES.
Who can war with thousands wage?—PERCY’S _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_.
As to the insect plagues of Egypt, I found the mosquitoes alone annoying.
Had I been in the country in the summer or autumn, my experience would,
I have no doubt, have been different. And as to the mosquitoes, I found
them seriously annoying only at Alexandria. At one time I had my face,
hands, and ankles very badly bitten. My own carelessness, however, was
the cause of this, for I was at that time in the habit of reading and
writing at night with open windows. This was giving my bloodthirsty
assailants, who had been attracted by the candle, every facility. They
had free ingress, and found their victim off his guard and exposed to
their attacks. At Zech’s hotel at Cairo, I found no mosquitoes. In going
up the river I had a _chasse_ every night, before I turned in, to clear
off the few that might be in my berth. I generally found one or two.
Herodotus mentions the use by the Egyptians of the mosquito net.
In a Belgravian hotel I have been badly bitten, and by a larger, blacker,
and more venomous kind of mosquito than those that forced themselves on
my notice in Egypt. On the same occasion I saw ladies who were suffering
so much from their attacks that they were obliged to have recourse to
medical treatment. This ferocious species is supposed to have been
imported to Thames-side in some one or other of the earlier stages of
insect existence, through the medium of the water-tanks of our West
African palm-oil traders.
It is curious that fleas, which so abound in Egypt, are not found in
Nubia. Many insects are very local: but one is surprised at finding such
a cosmopolite as the flea conspicuously absent in a country, which might
have been supposed especially adapted to his manners and customs. In
Egypt, as has been the case elsewhere, I often felt industrious fleas at
work upon me; but I am not aware that a flea ever yet succeeded in biting
me. Others I heard complaining much of them.
The boat in which I went up the river had just been painted, and so I
saw nothing in it of the Egyptian bug; but I heard that they abounded in
other boats. I found the Hotel d’Europe, at Alexandria, and Zech’s, at
Cairo, quite free from them.
The domestic fly is about as troublesome in Egypt in winter as it is in
this country in autumn.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE SHADOOF.
He shall pour the water out of his buckets.—_Book of Numbers._
In Egypt, where mythology, manners and customs, writing, and all the arts
appear never to have had a period of infancy, or of adolescence, but to
have come into being all in a perfected state and all together, it is
hard to say what is older than other things. It is so with everything
Egyptian; and so, of course, with the shadoof, the machine used in
raising water, by human labour, for irrigating the land. It is the oldest
machine with which we are historically acquainted: though, of course, it
implies the use of the plough, which, as well as the hoe, must have been
brought into the valley of the Nile by the immigrant ancestors of the
Egyptians.
Mechanically, the shadoof is an application of the lever. In no machine
which the wit of man, aided by the accumulations of science, has since
invented, is the result produced so great in proportion to the degree of
power employed. The lever of the shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a
prop. The pole is at right angles to the river. A large lump of clay from
the spot is appended to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a
goat-skin bucket. This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working it
stands on the edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water,
fed from the passing stream. When working the machine, he takes hold of
the cord by which the empty bucket is suspended, and, bending down, by
the mere weight of his shoulders dips it in the water. He then rises,
with his hand still on the cord. His effort to rise gives the bucket full
of water an upward cant, which, with the aid of the equipoising lump of
clay at the other end of the pole, lifts it to a trough into which, as
it tilts on one side, it empties its contents. The man continues bending
down and rising up again in this manner for hours together, apparently
without more effort than that involved in these movements of his body.
What he has done has raised the water six or seven feet above the level
of the river. But if the river has subsided twelve or fourteen feet, it
will require another shadoof to be worked in the trough into which the
water of the first has been brought. If the river has sunk still more, a
third will be required before it can be lifted to the top of the bank,
so as to enable it to flow off to the fields that require irrigation. I
sometimes saw as many as twenty series of shadoofs at work, two or three
in each series, within a range of half a mile. The poor fellows who work
them are, except for the barest decency, completely divested of every
article of clothing: an almost invisible loin cloth, and a tight-fitting
cotton skull-cap, are the whole of their apparel. They work all day in
the wet, and in the sun. As the materials for the shadoof—the pole, the
prop, the skin, and the clay—are all to be had on the spot, the poor
fellah is able, in a few minutes, to set up a machine that is of great
service to him, at little or no cost.
The other machine used in Egypt for raising water is called the sakia.
This is the Persian water-wheel. It is a large wheel with a continuous
row of jars arranged on its tire, something like the buckets of a
dredging-machine. These jars dip up the water as the wheel revolves, and
empty it, as the further revolution of the wheel brings their mouths
downwards, into a trough. It is worked by bullocks, or buffaloes. A
few years back there were many more of these at work than there are at
present. A murrain, or rinderpest, having destroyed the cattle, the
fellahs were obliged to take their place, and revert to the old shadoof
of the early Pharaohnic times.
CHAPTER LVII.
ALEXANDRIA.
Wide will wear. Narrow will tear.
Ancient Alexandria left its mark on the world. Its history, however,
appears to connect it rather with great names than with great events.
Fancy is pleased with the picture of the greatest of the Greeks, Philip’s
godlike son, Aristotle’s pupil, who carried about with him his Homer in
a golden casket, the Conquistador of Asia, and the heir of the Pharaohs,
tracing, with the contents of a flour-bag, the outlines of the nascent
city, which was to bear his name of might, and to sepulchre his remains.
The trade of Phœnicia revived in its harbours, and on its quays. It
became the Heliopolis, as well as the Thebes, of Hellenic Egypt. Even
the Hebrew part of the population caught the infection of the place, and
showed some capacity for philosophy and letters. Here it was that their
sacred Scriptures were, in the Septuagint translation, first given to the
educated world. And Plato, too, was soon more studied in the schools of
Alexandria than in his native Greece.
Here fell the Great Pompey. And here, in pursuit of him, came the Cæsar,
who bestrode the world like a Colossus; to be followed in our own time
by the only modern leader of men, whose name, if he had possessed the
generous magnanimity of the two captains of Greece and Rome, history
might have bracketed with theirs.
Here ‘the unparalleled lass,’ rather, perhaps, of the greatest of poets
than of history, having beguiled to his ruin the soft triumvir, preferred
death to the brutalities of a Roman triumph.
Matters, however, of this kind—and they might be multiplied—are only
bubbles on the surface. They interest the fancy, but have no effect on
the great current of events. We, at this day, are neither the better
nor the worse for them. But of the theology of Alexandria we must speak
differently. It is through that that it affected, and still affects, the
whole of Christendom. Sixteen hundred years have passed, and Alexandrian
thought still holds its ground amongst us.
It would help us to a right understanding of what this thought was, and
how it came to be what it was, if we knew something about the city,
the times, the country, and the mental condition of its inhabitants.
Alexandria, like Calcutta and New Orleans, having been called into
existence by the requirements of commerce, had been obliged, for the
sake of a harbour, to accept a singularly monotonous and uninteresting
site. This alone must have had much influence on the cast of thought of
its inhabitants. All who visit it will, I think, feel this. One cannot
imagine a healthy and vigorous literature springing up in a place where
Nature has neither grandeur nor beauty. Being mainly a commercial city,
its inhabitants—as must be the case in all large commercial cities in
the East—were composed of many nationalities. They had brought with
them their respective religions and literatures, as well as manners and
customs. It also contained the most brilliant Greek Court in the world,
in which we might be certain that Greek inquisitiveness, and mental
activity, would not be extinguished. This will account for the libraries
and the schools of Alexandria.
We must understand why it never could become anything in the world of
action. It was not because the Egypt of the Ptolemies was inferior to
the Egypt of the Pharaohs. It might have been its superior in every
particular of power and greatness, and yet have been unable to do
anything in the outer world. What kept it quiet was a consciousness
of moral and intellectual inferiority to the people time had at last
educated and organized on the northern shores of the Mediterranean.
The mental activity of the Alexandrians was all connected with their
libraries and schools. The work they did belongs to a condition of mind
which can use libraries and schools, but which really originates nothing.
It was all work upon other people’s work. They never produced anything
of their own. They never could have had an Æschylus, or an Aristophanes;
a Thucydides, or an Aristotle. The genius that can originate implies
vigour, freedom, individuality, irrepressible impulse—in two words,
expansive humanity. Nothing of this kind could have been the growth of
Alexandria. The possession it was of these qualities which made the
Greeks original, and great in everything they undertook: in art, in war,
in government, in colonization, in philosophy, in poetry, in history.
The genius which showed itself in their literature was only the same
genius which showed itself in other forms and directions, as needs
required: which showed itself in everything Greek. Alexandria could not
have produced a Pericles, or a Phidias, or an Alexander, any more than
a great writer. It would have taken the same mental stuff to make one of
these, as to make a poet, an historian, or a philosopher. They all work
with the same motive power. The main conditions, too, are the same in
all. It is the object only to which the work is directed that varies.
The Greeks were, emphatically, men. It was this that made them creative.
Humanity was the soul of everything they created; the stamp upon
everything they did; and this it is that gives to their work its eternal
value.
The mind of Alexandria was a parasitical plant. It fastened itself on the
work of others; and endeavoured to extract from it what they had already
assimilated, and which its own limited capacities disqualified it from
extracting, first hand, for itself from the rich store-house of Nature.
It could live upon their work, and turn it to its own narrowly-bounded
purposes. For instance, the Greek language had been perfected by the
long series of generations who had used it, and who had known nothing of
grammars and dictionaries: but at Alexandria it was studied for the sake
of the grammar and of the dictionary. Homer had been loved in the Greek
world, because he spoke, as a man, to men’s hearts and imaginations. He
was valued at Alexandria, not for his poetry—the men and women he had
created—but because he supplied a text to comment on. So with the divine
dreams of Plato: their use, at Alexandria, was that they supplied some
materials for the construction of systems.
It was exactly in this spirit that the Gospel was laid on the dissecting
tables of Alexandria. The object proposed was to set up a skeleton
to be called Christian Theology; and to inject and arrange certain
preparations, to be called Christian doctrines. Here was a strange
perversion. Never were the uses to which a thing had been ingeniously
turned so thoroughly alien to its real nature and design. The objects
of the Gospel were moral and religious. Its appeals were addressed to
the ordinary conscience, and to the ordinary understanding: in them
its philosophy is to be found. But the systematizers of Alexandria had
no taste for dealing with such materials. The Christian religion, as
presented to us in their theology, has not one particle of the Gospel in
it: no heart, no soul; no human duties, no human motives—nothing human,
nothing divine. It is something as hard, and as dry, as a mummy; and
would be as dead, were it not for its savage, truculent spirit. It is an
attempt to construct a material god, mechanically, of body, parts, and
passions—the Egyptian passions of the day; such as burnt, volcanically,
in the hearts of the crocodile haters, and crocodile worshippers, of
Ombos and Tentyra, and impelled them to eat each other’s still quivering
flesh, and drink each other’s blood hot. The watch-word, the source,
the main-spring, of Christ’s religion, the one word that fulfils it, is
absent from this travesty of it.
This anatomical Christianity, in which there is no Gospel, this
systematic divinity, in which there is nothing divine, this mechanical
theology, which contradicts the idea of God, Alexandria had the chief
hand in inflicting on the world, and a grievous infliction they were.
Christendom is still suffering from it. It is the anatomy of a body from
which the heart, the blood, the flesh, the muscles, all that rendered
it a living power, and made it beautiful and beneficent, have been
removed. It is the systematization of a _Hortus Siccus_. It is a theology
that kills religion, in order that it may examine it. The religion
that is fixed and formulated; a matter of definitions, and quantitive
proportions; that can be handled, and measured, and weighed; that can
be taken to pieces, and put together again by a monk in his cell, just
as if it were a Chinese puzzle; cannot be the living growth of minds
whose knowledge is ever being extended, and of consciences that are ever
becoming more sensitive. It cannot indeed, as far as these things go, be
a religion at all. A religion, though burdened with them, and perpetually
dragged by them into the sphere of formalism, controversy, and passion,
may, and will, live on in spite of them; for nothing can kill religion:
still the two are antagonistic and incompatible.
The Alexandrian theologians interpreted Christianity in accordance with
the criticism, the knowledge, the ignorance, the mind, and the conscience
of their day. They could hardly have done otherwise. They came from caves
in the desert, and from old tombs, and they returned to them for fresh
inspiration. They had a right to interpret things according to the light
that was in them. So have we. Our light, however, is somewhat different
from theirs. ‘The New Commandment’ was not one that at all commended
itself to their sepulchral, troglodytic minds. It finds no place in their
creeds. We, however, give it the first place in ours. The perfect law of
liberty was unintelligible to them: their only thought about it was to
make it impossible: to us it is as necessary as the air we breathe. They
held that man is for the creed: we that the creed is for man. Which is
right makes much difference.
* * * * *
For the traveller who is desirous of seeing the present in connexion
with the past, Alexandria has many other reminiscences. Homer mentions
the Isle of Pharos, which formed the harbour. On this classic rock
Ptolemy Philadelphus built a magnificent lighthouse of white marble.
This was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world. Its name, which
was borrowed from the rock on which it had been placed, has passed into
most of the languages of Europe, as the appellative of these useful
structures. We, however, who employ them more largely than any other
people, and who have in our Eddystone the finest and most interesting
structure of this kind in the world, built under widely different
conditions from those of the tideless middle sea, very properly give to
them a name of our own.
The causeway, three-quarters of a mile in length, which was formed for
the purpose of connecting Ptolemy’s Pharos with the mainland, having been
enormously expanded, in the course of two thousand years, by the same
process, which, in the same period, has raised the present to more than
twenty feet above the original level of Rome, is now the Frank quarter of
the city. The whole of this space must, therefore, in the time of Homer,
and down to the time of Alexander, have been under water.
The city, having become the capital of Egypt, grew rapidly in population,
wealth, and splendour. The Ptolemies disposed of the revenue of Egypt,
which had now become the chief entrepôt of the commerce of the world; and
they spent it with no niggard hand in embellishing their capital. Few
great cities have had so large a proportion of their space occupied by
magnificent public buildings. Nothing, however, need be said here of its
palaces, theatres, and temples, except that they were worthy of the city
which filled the first place in the cities of the Greek world, and in the
universal empire of the Cæsars was second only to Rome.
Pompey’s Pillar, as the inscription upon it informs us, was erected in
honour of Diocletian.
Cleopatra’s Needle had originally stood at Heliopolis, where it had been
set up by Thuthmosis III., and afterwards seen by Joseph and Moses.
It was transplanted from Heliopolis to Alexandria by one of the Roman
Emperors, after the time of Cleopatra. It had been cut from the granite
quarries of Syené. It has, therefore, travelled from the John o’Groat’s
House to the Land’s End of Egypt.
Its deservedly world-famous library recurs to every one who thinks about
Old Alexandria. No other library had ever such a history. It was founded
two hundred and eighty-three years before the Christian era; that is to
say, before Rome had entered on her Punic wars. While those wars were
raging the Alexandrians must, within the walls of this library, have
canvassed the news of the day with much the same feelings with which we
were ourselves, but just now, talking over the last intelligence from
Sedan and Metz, from the Loire and the Seine. In the Greek world a public
library had never before been heard of. It was connected with a great
mass of buildings called the Museum, which was a kind of institution for
the promotion of study, discussion, and learning. Eventually it contained
700,000 volumes. Of these 400,000 were at the Museum; the remainder
were in a building connected with the great Temple of Serapis. With the
Ptolemies the enrichment of this library was always a great concern.
They dispersed their collectors wherever books were to be obtained; and
were ready to pay the highest price for them. It was the boast of the
city that the library contained a copy of every known book. At last it
was overtaken by the fate which awaits all the works of man. In Cæsar’s
attack on the city the great library of the Museum was accidentally
burnt. The library, therefore, which is supposed to have been destroyed
by the command of the Caliph Omar, could only have contained the books,
that might have remained to his time, of the inferior library of the
Serapeum. This we know had been very much dilapidated by neglect, and
in other ways, during the intervening seven centuries of occasional
violence, and of constant decay. One, however, is hardly disposed to
acquiesce in the opinion on this subject of the historian of the _Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire_; for, among so large a collection of
books, there must, one would suppose, have been some precious works of
antiquity, which we should now value highly, but which were then lost to
us irreparably.
While we regard with reverence this great library, both for the antiquity
of the date of its establishment, and for the useful and noble purposes
it was intended to serve, those of perpetuating, and of extending,
knowledge, we should be guilty of an injustice if we were to forget that
it was not the first institution of its kind. The idea of establishing
a public library, which the Ptolemies deserve much credit for carrying
out liberally and thoroughly, had nothing original in it in one country,
at all events, of the world, and that one was Egypt. Eleven centuries
before their time, as we have already seen, the Great Rameses, in his
temple-palace at Thebes, had erected a public library. The walls of
it are still standing. We need not repeat what we have said elsewhere
about the sculptures on its walls, the inscription over its doors, the
manuscripts dated from it still in existence, and the tombs of its
librarians. This was done more than three thousand years ago. Perhaps,
then, other ideas and practices, we may be in the habit of regarding as
modern, were also familiar to the Egyptians of that remote day. Those
times, indeed, may, in some not unimportant matters, be virtually nearer
to us than the times of our Edwards and Henries.
CHAPTER LVIII.
CAIRO.
Mores hominum multorum, et urbes.—HORACE.
Just as the interest of Alexandria belongs to what we call antiquity,
so does Cairo derive the whole of its interest from existing sources.
I say what we call antiquity, for by that word we mean the classical
period of Greece and Rome; but this classical period is, in reality, only
the connecting link between our modern world and the old primæval world
of Egypt; it is thus the true middle ages of universal history; while
true antiquity is the domain of Pharaohnic Egypt. But as to Cairo: El
Islam is of the things that now are, and Cairo was never anything but a
Mahomedan city. Its most interesting memories are of the mighty Saladin,
who fortified it, and preferred it to all other cities. It is the true
capital of Arabdom. Not its holy city, but its Paris. Its history is all
of Caliphs and Khedivés.
But the first thing to understand about any famous city is how it came
to be where it is. Cairo is where it is, because Memphis was where
it was. Its site is the natural centre of Egypt. It occupies, by the
dispensation of Nature, the place in Egypt which the heart does in the
human body. Being situated at the apex of the Delta, it commands the
axis of communication throughout the whole of the upper country, and all
the divergent lines of communication which traverse the Delta. He who
establishes himself here has cut the country in two; and can concentrate
all its resources, or assail any point, at his will. It is the vital
centre. Just so was it with Memphis under the old Monarchy, and the
Hyksos, and during the subsequent history. No sooner had an invader got
a firm footing here than the rest of the country was prostrate, and
helpless. The master of Cairo is the master of Egypt.
The city is situated on the right bank of the river, at the foot of
a spur of the Mokattam, or Arabian, range of hills. In order to get
drinkable water it was necessary that it should be placed so low as
that the water of the river might be brought into it. The reader is now
aware that there are no springs in Egypt, and that the water of the
wells, from the nature of the soil, is brackish and undrinkable. There
is, however, in the citadel of Cairo a well of sweet water; the well is
sunk through the limestone, of course to somewhat below the depth of
the height on which the citadel stands; and so it came to suggest to
me the thought that, if borings were made of sufficient depth to pass
completely through the nitrous alluvium of the valley, and to perforate
the subjacent strata, it might be possible to find water fit for drinking
anywhere, and everywhere. It might not often be worth while to go to this
expense, because in most places it would still be cheaper to get water
from the river; but it would be interesting to ascertain whether or no
good water could be obtained in this way. If so, there would then be one
small matter, at all events, which had escaped the sagacity of the old
Egyptians.
But to return to the site of Cairo: the level ground, on which it
stands, beginning at Boulak, its harbour on the river, reaches back about
a mile, where it is met by the high ground, which enters the city at the
south-east angle. On this point stands the citadel commanding the city.
The hills of the range which throws out this spur are seen rising, to
a considerable height, on the east of Cairo. They are utterly devoid
of vegetation; and being of about the colour of the sand of the desert
(they are of limestone), they glare in the sun, and are very striking and
conspicuous objects in the scenery of the place. Wherever you leave the
city, except at its north-west angle, and in the direction of the river,
you enter at once on the absolute desert.
There is no view in Egypt to be compared with that from the Citadel of
Cairo. The city, with all its oriental picturesqueness, is at your feet.
Domes and minarets are everywhere. You look over it, and your eyes rest
sometimes on the green culture, sometimes on the drab desert of Egypt.
Beyond, stretching away till it is lost in the haze of distance, is the
Valley of Egypt. Through it winds old Nile. It is closed on either side
by the irregular ranges of the Libyan and Arabian hills. You know that
these pass on through Egypt into Nubia, as the boundaries of the valley.
Beyond the river, at the distance of eight or nine miles, on the lower
stage of the Libyan range, stand the Great Pyramids of Gizeh. Further
off, at about double the distance from you, stand the older Pyramids
of Abouseir. Seen from no other point are the Pyramids so impressive.
There they stand, at the entrance of the valley, and have stood for more
than five thousand years, to tell all who might come down into Egypt of
its greatness and glory. They have none of the forms, or features, of
architecture. They are mountains, escarped for monuments, by Titan’s
hands.
And a little further on are the mounds of Memphis. There lived the
men—one would give something to see a day of the life of that old
world—who imagined, and made these mountains. You remember that all you
saw of them at Memphis was a colossal statue prostrate on the ground. As
you look now on the Pyramids you understand that Colossus. These Titan
builders felt themselves more than men.
You think how pleasant it would be to sit here, on the parapet of the
citadel, inhaling the calumet of memory and imagination; your dear
friend, however, who is with you, and who is the most patient and best
fellow living, has had enough of it; and he summons back your thoughts
from their flight into the far-off tracts of antique time, by a proposal
to take another look at the Khan Khaleel Bazaar. As you move away you
tell him, to be revenged, ‘that history, like religion, has no power
over those who have no imagination; or an imagination furnished only
with the images of their own sight-and-self-bounded world.’ ‘Nonsense,’
he replies; and you find yourself again jostling your way through
the narrow, crowded, irregular streets of Cairo, upon an ass, with a
little swarthy urchin running before you to clear your path. And though
everybody seems to submit to him, and to attend readily to his shouts
of ‘Right,’ ‘Left,’ ‘Mind your legs,’ you will always have to keep a
sharp look-out yourself. You will often be brought to a standstill.
There are no trottoirs. The people on foot, the camels, and donkeys, are
all jumbled up together. The projecting loads on the camels’ sides seem
almost arranged for giving you a lick on the head, and knocking you off
your ass.
At last you emerge from the side streets into the Mouské. This is the
main artery of the city, and here is the full tide of Cairene life. It
is now between four and five o’clock, and the tide is at the top of the
flood. The street is straight, and, for a Cairene street, wide enough;
the crowd is great; but here everybody, as a matter of course, endeavours
to make way for everybody. What you first notice is the abundance of
colour. The red tarboosh is perhaps the commonest covering for the head.
The turbans vary much; some are of white muslin; some of coloured shawls.
The variety of dress is great. Nineteen-twentieths of the passers-by are
clad in some form or other of Oriental costume. Their complexions vary
as much as their dress. There is every shade, from the glossy black of
the Nubian to the dead white of the Turk. The predominant colours are
the different shades of yellowish brown which have resulted from the
varying degrees of intermixture of Arabs and Copts. Here, at home, the
men being at work during the day, it often happens that there are as
many women in the street as men. In Cairo the former are often entirely
wanting in the street scene, and are never seen in a large proportion.
In stature the men are almost always above what we call the middle
height, well proportioned, and never fat or pursy, like our beef-eating
and beer-drinking people. Their features are regular and pleasing. Their
bearing staid and dignified.
There are in the crowd men with water-skins and water-jars. For some
insignificant coin—there are four hundred paras in a shilling—they
sell drinks to thirsty souls. There are hawkers of bread, of fish, of
vegetables, of dates, of oranges, and of a multitude of other matters.
These articles are generally cried, if not in the name of the Prophet,
still with some pious, or, if not so, then with some poetical, formula.
Perhaps a carriage of the Viceroy passes containing some of the ladies
of the hareem. They will be escorted by two black guardians of the
hareem on horseback, one on each side of the carriage, and preceded by
two runners carrying long wands, and dressed in spotless white, with the
exception of their red fezes and gaily-coloured shawls. The latter they
use as sashes. Each will have cost them fifteen pounds, or more.
When you have become accustomed to the people in the streets, you look
at the people in the shops; of course not the Frank, but the native
shops. These are merely recesses in the walls of the houses, which form
the street. The merchant, or shopkeeper, seldom lives in the house, in
the ground floor of which his shop is situated, but generally somewhere
at a distance. He has no shopmen, or assistants. The recess, in which
he carries on his business, if large, is about in space a cube of ten
or twelve feet. It has no door or windows, but is closed with shutters,
which the shopkeeper takes down when he comes to do business. He puts
them up whenever he wants to go to Mosk, or elsewhere. When his shop is
open for business he will be seen seated, cross-legged, on the floor in
front of his goods. Every shop being a dark hole, and having its owner
seated in front of it, reminded me of a prairie-dog village, where every
hole has a prairie-dog seated in front of it, much in the same way; and,
too, on the look out. These traders appear to have no Arab blood in them,
but to be Greeks, Jews, Turks, Syrians, anybody and everybody except the
people of the country. Many of them have an unhealthy appearance. Few of
them are good-looking.
As to the houses, what most frequently attracts the eye is the carved
wood lattice of the windows. The first floor is frequently advanced
beyond the ground-floor. The archway of the door is, in the better class
of houses, often ornamented with carved stone-work; and the door itself
decorated with a holy text—reverently; perhaps, also, with some lurking
idea of excluding evil influences.
But this style of building is now becoming obsolete; and the new houses
in and around the Esbekeyeh, and between the Esbekeyeh and Boulak, are
being built in the Frank style. The Viceroy has here, for the space of
about a square mile, laid out broad macadamized streets, with broad
trottoirs on each side, as if he were contemplating an European city.
Not much, however, with the exception of these roadways, has yet been
done towards carrying out his grand designs, except around the Esbekeyeh.
This is the grand _place_, or square, of Cairo. It now contains a public
garden, that would be an ornament worthy of any great European city.
It is well lighted with gas made from English coal. As you go to the
opera—for there is an opera, too, in Cairo—and return after it is over
to your hotel, you are glad of the light; but you are, at the same time,
conscious of a little sentimental jar. You did not go to Egypt to find
coal gas, and London gas-lamp-posts in the city of Saladin, and of the
Caliphs, and in the land of the Pharaohs. You are no longer surprised
that the new houses are built in the Frank style.
The Mosks of Cairo may be counted by the hundred. Some have great
historical interest; some great artistic merit; some are the great
schools of the country.
The old Mosks of Cairo throw much light on the history of the pointed
arch, particularly the oldest of them all, that of Ahmed Ebn e’ Tooloon;
which, however, is in so ruinous a condition that it is no longer in
use. Its date, as recorded in two Cufic inscriptions on the walls, is
879 A.D.—that is to say, three hundred years before the pointed arch was
adopted in this country. It is very improbable that this Mosk of Tooloon
was the first building in which it was used, because it is not introduced
here hesitatingly, as would have been done had it been struggling for
recognition, but is boldly and firmly carried out in every part of the
structure, and even with some combination of the horseshoe shape, as
if it were a form with which the architect had become so familiar that
he had even begun to modify it. So great a change in construction, and
in the effects produced by form, must have had to fight for some time
against previously-established forms. We may, therefore, safely decide
that its introduction reaches further back than the date just given. This
is saying that the world is indebted for it to Saracenic thought, and
taste. This need not surprise us, because at that time there was no other
people whose thought was so prolific; and theirs was prolific because it
had been aroused to effort by their great achievements. Just as we learn
to walk by walking, and to talk by talking, so do men learn how to do
great things by doing great things. Other Cairene Mosks continue this
history of the pointed arch.
The Mosk of Sultan Hassam has features that are worth noticing. Few
buildings exhibit greater freedom of design, which comes, I suppose, of
that depth of feeling, which is able to break the fetters of thought.
Such a structure could have been the product only of a time when mind was
deeply moved, and had become conscious of its power. Men knew then what
they wanted, and believed in themselves, that they could satisfy their
want. In such times servile imitations, and reproductions are impossible.
They do not express what all feel. They do not supply what all are
asking for. In this Mosk the porch, the inner court, the astonishing
height of the outer wall, springing from the declivity of the hill-side,
all the details, and the whole general effect, show that those who
built it were conscious of real, deep aspirations, and were not acting
under factitious ones; and that they were conscious also of possessing
within themselves the power of giving form to their aspirations. It
interprets to us the mind of its builders. They were full of vigour, and
self-reliance. They yearned to give expression, in forms of beauty, and
grandeur, to what was stirring within them.
As I was thus communing, historically, with the intense Mahomedan
feeling, which had given a voice to every stone in the building, I was
interrupted by another voice, but it was one of a kind, which, we may
presume, will never have a thought of clothing itself in forms of beauty,
and grandeur. ‘Look,’ it said to me, ‘up there at those crosses.’ ‘No,’ I
replied. ‘It is impossible. There can be no crosses here.’ The objects I
was invited to look at crown the cornice of the central, hypæthral court.
They bear some kind of resemblance to _fleurs de lis_. ‘Yes,’ the voice
continued. ‘Any one can see now just how it all is. These are the old
places from which those ritualists get their mediæval crosses, and all
that kind of thing.’
The great Mosk of El Azar is the university of Egypt, and of the
surrounding countries. The foreign students are divided according to
nations. Those of Egypt according to the provinces they come from. The
cycle of religion, law, science, and polite learning, as these words
are understood in the East, is here taught. Some come merely to qualify
themselves for professions, or occupations, in which what they may
acquire here will be needed. Others come with the intention, as was
contemplated in our own universities, of life-long study.
Some of the tombs of the Memlook, and of other dynasties, that have ruled
modern Egypt, are good examples of oriental taste, and feeling. These
tombs are generally connected with Mosks. This connexion was intended
to add dignity to the tomb, and to enhance its sacredness. The Mosk and
tomb together are regarded as the monument of the deceased prince. The
desire to honour the dead has, in many of these monuments, produced
admirable work, the beauty of which is proportionate to the depth of the
desire which prompted it. Sad, however, is it to see such beautiful work
now falling into decay. New dynasties in the East care nothing for the
monuments of the dynasties that preceded them.
The money spent in building the utterly useless Mosk of Mohamed Ali in
the citadel would have put into repair all these monuments, which abound
not more in exquisite work than in historical interest; and which,
then, would have been secured to the world for some centuries longer at
least. But nothing of this kind can be expected of Orientals. To repair
and maintain the monuments of past generations is not an idea that has
ever commended itself to their minds. People build there to show forth
their own greatness, and to perpetuate their own names. If, therefore,
I have money to spend on wood and stone, why should I so spend it as to
perpetuate another man’s name, and to set forth the greatness of some
other builder? For this is what I should do if I repaired his Mosk, or
palace. Would it not be wiser for me to spend it in perpetuating my own
name, and setting forth my own greatness?
To us there occurs the thought of the historical value of the monuments
of the past. This, however, is not an idea than can have any place in
the mind of an Oriental. He has no conception of the historical value
of anything; nor has he any idea of what history itself is. There can
be no history where there is no progress; and his religion, by settling
everything once for ever, excludes from his mind the idea of progress,
and with it goes the idea of history.
But still, from our point of view, it is a waste of money and labour to
build when you might repair. To repair is cheap, to build is costly. But
this is precisely what commends the Oriental practice to the Oriental’s
mind. That it will cost much money, and much labour pleases him. In
matters of this kind, ideas of prudence and utility have no place.
An hundred kings of England, we can imagine, occupying in succession
Windsor Palace, and preferring it, simply on account of its antiquity, to
anything they might be able to build themselves. Every one of them would
think it a folly to entertain the idea of building another palace. But
every Khedivé of Egypt, just like every King of Nineveh, must build a new
one.
Private houses in Cairo appear to be in the same predicament as the
Mosks. None are kept in a state of repair. Everything is either being
built, or is falling into decay.
Every other Englishman you meet in Cairo, and it is more or less so
throughout the East, has some story to tell you of the rapacity, and
roguery of the bazaars. The complaint is made somewhat in the following
style:—‘What do you think of that slippered, and turbaned old villain,
of whom I bought this amber mouthpiece, and this kafia, having had the
conscience to ask me four napoleons for each of them? I was not going
to be done in that way, so I said to him, “You shocking cormorant, I’ll
give you four napoleons for the two: not one para more. Four napoleons is
my figure.” “Four napoleons!” he said, with a shudder, “I give you the
things for nothing. Take them away with you.” And he pretended to put
them into my hand. But I showed him the money. He could not stand the
sight of the gold; and so you see I have got the amber, and the silk,
at a fair price?’ Well: perhaps you have; or, perhaps, you have given
too much for them, after all. But your story is no proof that the old
fellow in slippers and turban was a rogue. It is you who do not know
the circumstances and the customs of the country: and in this matter
theirs differ from ours. With us there is so much competition in trade,
that all the leaning is the other way. Every trader wishes to attract
by the lowness of his prices. But still, here as there, the rule is to
buy as cheap, and sell as dear as you can. This is the rule on which the
slippered, and turbaned old fellow acts. He knows, though it is very hard
for him to admit the idea—yet he admits it without understanding how it
can be so—that you are travelling for your amusement. He, therefore,
infers that you must have plenty of money to spare: otherwise you could
not be travelling in this way. You want this kafia, or mouthpiece. There
is no regular market-price, where there is so little competition. So he
will try to get for it as much as he can. Small blame to him for that.
When you command the market at home for any article, what do you do
yourself? You ask for it what you can get, without reference to cost
price. You sell a good weight-carrying hunter at a fancy price. You sell
a piece of land to a neighbour at an accommodation price. If you can’t
get what you asked at first, you abate something, and take less. He does
the same.
You go into a shop anywhere in Italy, say a bookseller’s, and ask the
price of a book. ‘So many lire,’ he replies: several more than he intends
to take. He will receive it, if you give it; but he does not expect
you to give it. He is very fond of a little talk; and to have a little
talk with you is an agreeable addition to the pleasure of selling the
book. You call this, contemptuously, chaffering; or, angrily, cheating.
It is detestable to you, but the reverse of detestable to the Italian
bibliopole. You are annoyed at it. He can’t understand why.
But to go back to our friend in the slippers and turban. The seat he
invites you to take, and the coffee and pipe he offers to you, imply that
he supposes you will not give what he asks at first; and that the price
ultimately agreed upon will be the result of a long negotiation. He is
in no hurry; nor, as I can show, is he without conscience. I bought a
pair of bracelets of one Mohammed Adamanhoury, in the Khan Khaleel. I
had liked the appearance of the bracelets, and I had asked the price. It
did not occur to me at the moment that I was in Cairo, or perhaps what
was the regular practice in transactions of this sort in Cairo. Perhaps
I had fallen into this temporary oblivion, because the conversation and
bearing of Mohammed were pleasant. I had brought him a little souvenir
from an Englishman who had travelled throughout Syria with him, and knew
his many estimable qualities. Mohammed’s beard was just beginning to be
grizzled with age, so he had had time to see the world, and to know it.
His complexion was fair for Egypt, a pale yellowish brown. His features,
singly, and in their general expression, were good. His shawl-turban,
and shawl-sash, and all his get up were unexceptionable. His voice and
manner were as smooth as oil. His style of conversation perceptibly
flowery and complimentary; but that is the manner of his people. I should
myself of all things have liked to have travelled through the East with
him. It would have been very pleasant at the time; and not unpleasant
afterwards to be one’s self remembered, and talked of, as he talked of my
friend whom, a year or two back, he had accompanied in his wanderings.
But about the bracelets: I had given, without hesitation or comment, what
he asked. A friend, I was travelling with, finding me at his shop, and
seeing what I had bought, would like to have a pair of the same kind of
bracelets. He asked the price. I told him. ‘No,’ interposed Mohammed,
addressing himself to my companion, ‘your friend gave all I asked; and,
therefore, I must name a less price to you.’ Conscience is then not
extinguished utterly in those who ask, at first, for the goods they are
selling more than the cost price, plus the legitimate profit (if there
be such a thing as legitimate profit). Mohammed Adamanhoury of the Khan
Khaleel is my demonstration.
CHAPTER LIX.
THE CANALIZATION OF THE ISTHMUS.
Sic vos non vobis.—VIRGIL.
I went from Cairo to the Suez Canal by the new branch railway from
Zakazeek to Ismailia. The original direct line from Cairo to Suez has
been abandoned on account of the expense both of working the inclines
over the intervening high ground, and of supplying a line through the
desert with water, a great part of which had to be carried in skins on
camels’ backs.
As you pass along the rails you see, in the occurrence, here and there,
of patches of alluvial soil in the desert, indications of former
cultivation. This cultivable soil must have been created by the water
of the old Bubastis Canal. You see, also, that cultivation is now
re-establishing itself all along the Sweet Water Canal, which supplies
the towns and stations of the Suez Canal with drinking water as it did,
from the first and throughout its excavation, the army of fellahs that
was employed on the work. The fact is that there is a great deal of
argillaceous matter in what appears to be merely the grit, and siliceous
sand, of the desert: all, therefore, that is requisite, in many places,
for at once rendering it fertile is a sufficiency of water.
The history of the canalization of the desert is full of interest.
The earliest attempt of the kind with which we are acquainted is that
ascribed to the Great Rameses. That first Canal was between fifty and
sixty miles in length. It left the Nile at Bubastis, and reached the
neighbourhood of Lake Timsah. Upon it Rameses built his two treasure
cities Pithom, and Ramses, mentioned in the first chapter of Exodus. By
treasure cities is probably meant strongly-fortified places, in which
were caravanserais for the trade with Asia, and large depôts of the
warlike materials kept in store by the king for his Asiatic campaigns.
That they could have been treasure cities, in the ordinary acceptation of
the word treasure, is impossible. That would not have been kept on the
most exposed border of the kingdom; and the treasury of Rameses must have
been at Thebes, his capital, at the other extremity of Egypt. Herodotus,
and others mention Pithom. The site of Ramses, though its name occurs
nowhere, excepting in Exodus, has been ascertained by the discovery of a
granite statue of Rameses, between the figures of the two gods, Ra and
Atmu, with the name of the king several times repeated in the inscription
upon it. This was found at the time of the French expedition. Rameses
must have been worshipped in his own city; and his being placed between
these two gods, in this piece of sculpture, shows that it belonged to a
temple. The mound, therefore, of rubbish from which was disinterred this
group of figures in which the king is presented as an object of worship,
must be the _débris_ of the city of Ramses. There is no doubt about the
site of Pithom.
Especial interest is attached to these cities. We know that the
Israelites were employed in building them: and, as it seems probable that
the cities and Canal were parts of a single plan, we may suppose that
the Israelites were forced to labour in the construction of the Canal
also. Of this a part, that near Bubastis, still remains in use. With how
much interest then does it become invested, when we feel that we may
regard it as the possible, even as the probable, work of the people Moses
led out of Egypt. At all events we can stand on the ruins of the cities
they built with the certainty that here was the scene of their labours.
But something more remains to be said. We have in this first chapter of
the history of the canalization of the isthmus an ascertained date, which
enables us to fix the date of the exodus. The oppression took place in
the reign of the Pharaoh who preceded the one to whose reign the exodus
belongs. As then the oppression took place in the reign of the builder of
Pithom and Ramses, the exodus must have occurred in the reign of his son,
and successor, Menophres.
The extension of the cultivated soil of Egypt was only a secondary object
in the construction of this Canal. Its main object was to strengthen that
side of Egypt which was exposed to invasion from the dreaded and hated
Hyksos. One of the greatest works of the great Rameses was the covering
the whole of Egypt with a network of waterways in connexion with the
river. These Canals, or wet-ditches had a double purpose. They would
greatly extend the supply of water, in exact proportion to which was
the capacity of Egypt for supporting life; and they would also have an
invaluable defensive utility, for they would render it impossible for a
mounted army, such as that of their north-eastern neighbours would be,
to overrun the country. This Canal, then, branching off from the Nile
at Bubastis, and running out for sixty miles into the desert, with the
strong cities of Pithom and Ramses upon it, would be the first check
to an invading army, which would have either to turn the Canal, or to
sit down in the desert before those cities. The history, therefore, of
the canalization of the desert begins with a work, the first object of
which was national defence, and which also greatly promoted the (in
its case) secondary object of national extension. To create a means of
communication between the two seas is not a purpose we are under any
necessity for ascribing to the designers of this first Canal.
We have spoken of Rameses as its constructor, and the reasons for
assigning it to him are amply sufficient, still it may be as well to
remember that it might have dated far back beyond his time. The Egyptians
had been great then for more than a thousand years in Canal making.
This implies familiarity with the art of taking levels, and with other
branches of hydraulic engineering. The Bahr Jusuf Canal, which ran
parallel to the river throughout almost the whole of the valley of Egypt,
and was many times as great a work as this Pithom-Ramses Canal, had
been constructed at so remote a time that all tradition of its date and
construction had been lost. Amenemha, under the old primæval monarchy,
had carried out enormous hydraulic works in the Faioum; and Menes, the
first human name in Egyptian history, had been great in this department
of engineering; for he had, at Memphis, given a new channel to the Nile
itself. There would, therefore, have been no difficulty whatever in this
particular Canal we are now speaking of having been constructed many ages
before the time of the great Rameses; and the district through which it
passed was one to which attention must have been directed from very early
days, both for the purpose of strengthening it against any sudden inroad,
and because it was the necessary base of operations in all Egyptian
invasions of Asia. It is, however, easy to wander about in the region of
possibilities; what we know with certainty is that this Canal existed in
the time of Rameses, that he fortified it, and that he had the credit of
having constructed it.
There is no evidence that he seriously entertained the project of
connecting the Nile with the Red Sea by the prolongation of the Canal.
Some such idea must have occurred to so sagacious a people as the
Egyptians of that day, and they would have found no difficulty in
carrying it out. They made, however, no attempt of the kind. The reason
is on the surface. Defence was what people were then thinking about,
and a through water-way would only have been making a road for their
enemies; and it would have been one, of which Arabs, as they have always
shown a certain kind of aptitude for maritime affairs, and as the inlet
to it might have been easily reached by sea, would not have been slow in
availing themselves. There can be no reasonable doubt that there was, at
that date, a great deal of commerce, on the Indian Ocean, and, therefore,
on the Red Sea; indeed, we may be pretty sure that the annual number of
clearances in and out of Aden in the time of Rameses would not be looked
upon as insignificant at the present day.
Perhaps also the reason given by Aristotle had some weight. It was
known that the level of the Red Sea was higher than that of the Bitter
Lakes; the influx, therefore, of the salt water, which might take place
through the Canal, if it were extended to the sea, might, it was feared,
overwhelm a great deal of land which had lately been brought into
cultivation by aid of the fresh water of the Canal from Bubastis.
The date of the first Canal, supposing it to be no earlier than the time
of Rameses, was the fourteenth century before our era. It was still in
use in the time of Herodotus, being then about one thousand years old.
Necho, who planned and carried out the expedition that circumnavigated
Africa, and who of all the Pharaohs was the one most disposed to maritime
enterprise, was naturally inclined to the idea of connecting the Red Sea
and the Mediterranean by some system of internal navigation. But whatever
his designs were, he does not appear to have gone further in their
execution than the extension of the Canal of Rameses, which had then been
in existence at least seven hundred and fifty years, as far as the Bitter
Lakes. Herodotus was informed that he abandoned the enterprise on having
been told by an oracle that he was working for the barbarians.
Darius, in the time of the Persian occupation of Egypt, carried out the
grand idea to its completion, by extending the work of Rameses and Necho
to the Red Sea. As there had, all along, been an apprehension of the
effect upon cultivation of admitting into the land the salt water, we
find, as we might have anticipated, that it was not allowed a passage
into the Bitter Lakes, but was kept back by a lock. The connexion of the
Red Sea and the Mediterranean by an unbroken water-way was now complete.
A vessel might leave the Red Sea at the modern Suez, or somewhere in
that neighbourhood, and enter the Mediterranean at the Pelusiac mouth of
the Nile. This through communication was in actual use in the time of
Herodotus. Darius’s completion of the work followed Necho’s extension at
an interval of about a century.
The ensuing century and a half was a period of troubles and decadence.
We are, therefore, not surprised to hear that when Alexander the Great
entered Egypt, he found the Canal no longer open. A larger expenditure
may have been required to keep up the banks, and to dredge out the sand
that was always drifting into the channel, than could have been commanded
in such times; and so it had been neglected and had become impassable.
Another century elapses; order and prosperity have been restored to
Egypt; and Ptolemy Philadelphus re-opens the connexion of the Bitter
Lakes and the Red Sea. He did not clear out the old Canal of Darius
which had been blocked up, and abandoned, but cut a fresh one. He had it
constructed of sufficient width and depth to allow ships of war to pass
from the Sea to the Lakes, intending to carry it through, on the same
scale, to the Mediterranean. But this magnificent project had to wait two
thousand years for its realization. It is, however, possible that Ptolemy
did not contemplate the direct route. If his war-vessels could have found
water enough in the Bubastic branch, he would of course have contented
himself with enlarging, and deepening the Bubastic Canal. We are told
that his design was that of a Canal 100 feet in breadth, and 40 feet
in depth. The latter appears incredible, because unnecessary. He built
Arsinöe, the modern Suez, at the Red Sea terminus of his Canal, at which
he constructed locks to exclude the salt water, and retain the fresh.
There was also a second Canal from the Nile to the neighbourhood of Lake
Timsah in the mid-desert. It was known by the name of the Emperor Trajan.
It left the river at Babylon—possibly the Babylon from which the first
Epistle of St. Peter is dated—a few miles to the south of the site of
modern Cairo. It thus received its supply of water from a higher level
than the Canal of Rameses. It watered a new district in its passage
through the desert.
The Canals are now lost to sight for several centuries. At last, 644
A.D., they are again rescued from the obscurity into which they had
fallen by the Caliph Omar, who repaired, and restored them to use. About
a century after his time they were again destroyed.
There was then nothing new in the idea, or in the fact, of a water
communication between the two seas. The old Egyptians had fully debated
the question of whether it was better to have, or not to have it. If they
had thought it advisable to undertake it, they would have engineered
it in the completest manner, and on the grandest scale. They, however,
rejected the plan from motives of policy. The idea was actually carried
out, and through communication kept up by Persians, Greeks, Romans, and
Saracens. _Apropos_, then, to the recent opening of the Suez Canal, we
may say that the thing itself is more than two thousand years old: the
idea more than three thousand.
That it is direct, that is one hundred miles in length, instead of
indirect, which made the navigation nearly double that length, is the
difference, and the gain.
The only absolutely new point is that it is a salt water, and not a fresh
water Canal; and with respect to this, I think we may feel certain that
if old Rameses, or Necho, had engineered it, instead of M. Lesseps, it
would not, in this respect, have been as it is. They would have decided
in favour of fresh water, because they could then have constructed it at
half the cost; and would, furthermore, by so doing, have had a supply of
water in the desert, sufficient for reclaiming a vast extent of land,
which would have more than repaid the whole cost of construction. Instead
of cutting a Canal deep in the desert at an enormous cost, they would,
as it were, have laid a Canal on the desert. This they would have done
by excavating only to the depth requisite for finding material for its
levées, and for the flow of the water which was to be brought to it from
some selected point in the river. It is evident that this kind of Canal
might have been made wider, and deeper, than the present one at far less
cost. The river water would then have filled the ship Canal, just as it
now does the sweet-water Canal parallel to it. The sweet-water Canal now
reaches Suez. A sweet-water ship-Canal might have done the same. As far
as navigation is concerned, the only difference would have been that
locks would have been required at the two extremities, such as Darius,
and Ptolemy had at Arsinöe. These locks would have been at Suez, and at
the southern side of Lake Menzaléh.
But the diminution in the cost of construction, say 8,000,000_l._,
instead of 16,000,000_l._, would not have been the chief gain: that would
have been found in the fact that the Canal would have been a new Nile in
a new desert. It would have contained an inexhaustible storage of water
to fertilize, and to cover with life, and wealth, a new Egypt. Though,
indeed, not new historically; for this would only have been the recovery
from the desert of the old Land of Goshen, and the restoration to it, by
precisely the same means as of old, of the fertility it had possessed in
the days of Jacob and Rameses.
It was natural that the French should have been the most prominent
supporters of this scheme. Every Frenchman appeared to come into
the world with the idea in his mind that France, by the order and
constitution of Nature, was as fully entitled to Egypt as she was to
the left bank of the Rhine; and that nothing but an unaccountable
combination of envy and stupidity, withheld the human race, especially
those to whom these fair portions of the earth belonged, from recognizing
the eternal truth, and fitness of this great idea. Here we had a gauge
for measuring the moral sense of the educated portion of the French
nation. As to the Canal, their idea appears to have been that they were
only making improvements in a glorious property, the reversion of which
must be theirs. It would give them, too, such a footing in the country,
and such materials for the manufacture of pretexts, and claims, that it
would enable them, almost at their will, to expedite the advent of the
day when the reversion would fall to them.
I heard, while I was in Egypt, that the Imperial charlatan of France
had been behaving towards us in the matter of Egypt in the friendly and
straightforward manner it appeared he had been behaving in the matter of
Belgium. Our discerning friend, and staunch ally, I was told, had been
confidentially exhorting the Viceroy to disregard English policy and
advice, and to prepare for asserting his independence of the Sultan. Only
let Egypt become an independent kingdom, and then there would be a clear
field for the realization of the grand French idea M. Guizot declared,
some thirty years ago, no Frenchman could ever abandon. Under such
circumstances, nothing could be more easy than at any moment to find, in
the affairs and management of the Canal, grounds for a quarrel, that is
to say, for taking possession of the country: though perhaps the world,
taught by history, would predict that the attempt would not succeed. The
plan was to have things ready for turning to account, at any moment, any
opportunity that might arise.
The catastrophe of the last twelve months would have prevented my making
any such remarks as the fore going, were I now thinking of making them
for the first time. In that case they would have appeared too much like
being wise after the event; and too much, also, like being hard on those
who are down. I feel myself, however, at liberty to make them now, for
in so doing I am only repeating what I ventured to predict in print
four years ago (the fact even then for some years having been manifest
to many), that the _rôle_ of the Latin race was played out. People said
to me, ‘What can you mean? The French have the largest revenue, and the
finest army in Europe, and their military glory is untarnished.’ My
answer then was, that the French army appeared to have been changed into
a Prætorian guard; and that the French nation appeared to have lost the
moral instincts which compact a population into a people. Among those
instincts, the sense of right and justice, the absence of which we have
just been noticing, holds the first place: without it the formation and
maintenance of political society are impossible.
There are three towns on the Canal: Port Saïd, which is almost entirely
French; Ismailia, which is so to a great extent; and Suez, which has a
French quarter. At these places I heard that the French were far from
popular; that they are regarded as arrogant, and illiberal in their
dealings with the Arabs they employ; and vicious to a degree which
offends even the tolerant natives, who trouble themselves very little
about the morality of unbelievers. It would require some familiarity with
the life of these places to know how far such accusations are true: they
are only set down here because they are current among the non-French
part of the population. Certainly, however, at Port Saïd some things are
paraded which in most other places an attempt is made to keep out of
sight. But Port Saïd is the Wapping of the Canal. This town is built on
a reclaimed sand-bar. The hotel is better than one would have expected.
The _Place_, _Place_ Lesseps it is called, is ambitiously large. In some
parts of the town the stenches make you feel bad: of course on a low
sand-bar there can be no drainage. It seems to do a considerable trade
in pilgrims: those we saw were chiefly Russians. On being introduced to
the American Consul—he appeared to be an Italian—he offered to show me
his garden. It proved well worth seeing. It contained a good collection
in a small space, of African, Australian, and Brazilian plants. Many,
that with us require almost constant stove-heat, were flowering here, in
January, in the open air. Among the inhabitants, as at Ismailia, are to
be found many of the (in the East) ubiquitous Greeks.
Ismailia is very preferable every way to Port Saïd. It is in the heart
of the desert, and on the shore of a considerable lake. I can imagine
a not unprofitable, or over dull, month spent here by a man who finds
a pleasure in coming in contact with strange sorts of people; and who
also takes an interest in natural history and botany; for the natural
history and botany of such a place must be very peculiar. It must, too,
be pre-eminently healthy, for it combines the pure air of the desert with
that of the sea-shore, for such is now the shore of Lake Timsah. It has
a pretty good hotel, a _place_ yclept Champollion, a French bazaar, a
promenade, an Arab town, a good house surrounded by a garden belonging
to M. Lesseps, and a more ambitious one surrounded by sand, built by the
Khedivé, at the time of the opening of the Canal, for the Empress of
the French, and his other Royal visitors. Ismailia might also be made
the head-quarters for a great deal of very interesting Egyptological
inquiry. Within easy distances are Pelusium, the Abaris of the primæval
monarchy, Arsinöe, Pithom, Ramses, and Heroonpolis. Persians, Greeks,
and Romans alike left their marks on this neighbourhood. Here, too, was
the Goshen of the children of Israel. It would be interesting also to
ascertain how far into what is now desert reached the land that was then
cultivated; and what, relatively to the sea and river, was the level of
the bottom of the old Canal.
Suez is in a state of rapid decay. Many houses are untenanted. This
has been caused by the diversion of the traffic. What formerly passed
through the town now passes by it on the Canal. Here, again, the hotel
is good. Its Hindoo waiters are to be preferred to the Italian waiters
of Alexandria and Cairo. They are clean, quiet, and alert. Nature seems
to have fitted them for the employment, but perhaps you might think they
have heads for something better.
I was two days in passing through the Canal from end to end. For this
purpose I chartered at Suez, jointly with two friends who happened to be
with me, a small steamer. It was an open boat that might have held four
passengers. The crew consisted of three men. The distance is about one
hundred miles. Herodotus gives it very accurately when he says that the
Isthmus has a width of one thousand stadia.
To one who is on the look out for beautiful scenery and stirring life,
the two days’ steaming from Suez to Port Saïd will not give much
pleasure. As long as you are on the actual Canal, you pass along a
straight water-way between two high banks of sand. The sky overhead is
the only additional object in Nature. There is no vegetation. There are
but few birds. There is no animal on the banks, or insect in the air.
At long intervals there are small wooden shanties for watering stations.
A great many dredging machines are passed. Some are at work; but the
greater part of them are rusting, and rotting. They are large floating
structures, moved and worked by steam. Each of them costs between five
and six thousand pounds. Their business is to dredge up the mud, or sand
from the bottom of the Canal to a lofty stage which each carries, a
little above the level of the bank. From this elevation what is dredged
up is run down on an incline to the point on the bank where it is to be
deposited, and there shot out. They are called mud-hoppers. They are
hideous-looking objects; of all the works of man that float the most
unsightly: but they are what you here see most of. You occasionally have
the excitement of meeting a small steamer, carrying some official on the
business of the Canal, or for his own pleasure. The officials have quite
a fleet of these little steamers: almost every one his own. The rarest
object on the Canal is that for which it was constructed: a vessel of
one, or two, thousand tons passing through it. On the first day we saw
three. This was a good day. On the second day, our good luck, and that
of the Canal, continuing, we saw the same number. But, as the wind was
fresh, two of the three had got aground: of these two one was an English
troop ship with a regiment for India on board. Three little steam tugs
were hauling away at each. It is difficult to say how large vessels,
drawing within an inch or two of the greatest depth of water, and which
is to be found only in the mid-channel, can manage to keep out of
trouble: the margin for inattention, bad steering, for not making proper
allowance for wind, &c., being not far from nil. There are mooring posts
all the way along to enable one ship to make fast while another goes by.
The company’s regulations give them the power of blowing up a vessel they
consider hopelessly grounded.
But you are not always in a straight watercourse, between two high mounds
of sand. The two Bitter Lakes, and the Lakes Timsah and Ballah, are
passed through, and cover nearly half the distance. In the large Bitter
Lakes you are pretty nearly out of sight of land. A glass shows you that
there is a slight rise in the ground along their shores, upon which are
seen, here and there, stunted tamarisks, more like shrubs than trees. The
bed of these lakes, before the water was admitted, was full of detached
trees of this species. They grew larger on the lower ground. The tops
of some are still seen in and above the water. If, therefore, you leave
the channel which is buoyed out for you, you stand a chance of being
snagged. I take it for granted that in old time when none but sweet water
from the Nile, brought by the Bubastis and Babylon Canals, was admitted
to this district, much land now under salt water, and much more in the
neighbourhood, was then under cultivation.
The evaporation from the surface of the Bitter Lakes, as might be
expected in the hot dry desert, is enormous. This I was told had
perceptibly affected the climate, making it more cloudy, and more
inclined to occasional showers. Of course, whatever effect it has had,
must be in this direction; but seeing how small a proportion these lakes
bear to the contiguous seas, I am disposed to think the amount of this
effect very slight. There is, however, another effect of this rapidity
of evaporation, which we may measure, and weigh, and which is felt by
the fish. It increases the proportion of salt in the water to such an
amount, that in summer one gallon of water yields thirteen ounces of
salt: a gallon of Dead Sea water yields eighteen ounces. This, last
summer, killed almost all the different species of fish that had come
into the lakes the previous autumn, on the first opening of the connexion
with the two seas. I was told that at that time, the surface of the water
was covered with the dead. It is believed that some species proved, by
surviving, that they possessed a power of resisting a degree of saltness
they had never been exposed to before.
Lake Timsah is a large natural basin in the very centre of the Isthmus.
As its area is much less than the Bitter Lakes, while its shores are
higher, and more irregular, it possesses an approach to something
like a kind of picturesqueness you might not have been expecting. In
this midland harbour we found a fleet of large vessels: some of them
men-of-war; some even ironclads. A sense of surprise comes over you at
seeing not only a pleasing expanse of water in the thirsty, scorching
waste (how one wishes it were fresh water), but in addition a fleet of
mighty ships in the mid-desert.
The traffic of the Canal is increasing rapidly; and, I think, for obvious
reasons must go on increasing, till it has absorbed the whole of the
traffic of Europe with Asia. At first people were not prepared for it.
They had not the data requisite for their calculations, and so they
would hardly have been justified in building steamers in advance of
the demonstration of the practicability, and advantages of the route.
That demonstration is now complete: and I suppose there are now very
few sailing vessels being built in this country, or anywhere else, for
trading with the East. This part, therefore, of the question, may, I
take it for granted, be regarded as settled. I saw one of the P. and O.
boats, the _Candia_, passing through the Canal. The whole of its fleet
must eventually make use of it. The only wonder is that they do not do so
at once; for, while they are hesitating, multitudes of other steamers,
built for the India and China trade, and in which every improvement for
economizing coal, and for the convenience and comfort of the passengers,
has been adopted, have been put upon the line of the Canal. And as the
majority of passengers object to the trouble and expense of being hurried
overland from Suez to Alexandria, a great many of the old customers of
the P. and O. Company, and of travellers who would have been glad to
use the boats of so well-known a concern, are now going by these new
boats which take the through route. And this is only what the P. and O.
Company must, like the rest of the world, come to at last. Their delay
is only driving the custom into the hands of their rivals. It is in fact
creating, and maintaining those rivals. When, however, they have taken to
the Canal, this single company will pay for its use more than 100,000_l._
a year: for they will be bound to despatch, as they do now, a vessel each
way each week. The tonnage of their vessels will not be less than two
thousand. The Canal charges are 8_s._ a ton, so much for each berth for
passengers, and some other items, which together bring up the total to
not far short of 10_s._ a ton. This on a vessel of not less than 2,000
tons, will not be less than 1,000_l._[10] Each way this will have to be
paid. But it is what others are doing; and it will be, on the whole, a
gain over the present system of land-transport, for passengers and cargo
from Suez to Alexandria, and _vice versâ_; and practically, whatever it
may be on paper, at no loss of time.
For the Canal to take 100,000_l._ a year from one company would seem a
great deal: but it is a sum that is soon absorbed in the expenses of so
big a concern. I understood that at the beginning of this year: it was
February when I was there: they were taking about 1,000_l._ a day. This
was a great advance on what had been done previously; but it implies only
one ship of 2,000 tons through in the twenty-four hours. And is very far
short of what is indispensable for completing and keeping up the works.
This at present demands 3,000_l._ a day, or about 1,000,000_l._ a year.
It seems imperative that, even if a few more inches are not added to the
depth of water, the deep mid-channel should be widened.
The traffic is increasing so fast, and it is so certain, that all who
can come this way will, that we may believe that the Company, whether
the existing one, or some new company to which the existing one may be
obliged to sell the concern, will somehow or other find the means for
carrying out the necessary completions, and for maintaining the affair;
but it is hard to believe that, even if every keel that cuts the Indian
Ocean were, going and coming, to take this route, anything could remain
over for dividend in the lifetime of the present shareholders; for even
should a dividend be declared, the incredulous world will surmise that it
is paid, not because there are net profits to justify it, but with a view
to enabling the Company to raise loans needed for necessary completions,
for which the revenue would be inadequate.
It is natural to ask of what advantage to Egypt is this Canal? We might
answer, and perhaps rightly, that if the Isthmus had been divided by the
wand of a magician, and the Canal thus made at the cost of a word, or
of the waving of a hand, presented to the country, the advantage would
not have been very considerable. But we will take things as they are:
Suppose the case of the P. and O. boats. They have hitherto discharged
everything at Suez, and at Alexandria; and their passengers and cargo
have been carried across Egypt. We will suppose that the cost of this
operation has been for each boat 1,000_l._ The whole of this 1,000_l._
has been left in Suez and Alexandria. It was so much toll paid to Egypt
for so much work done in helping passengers and cargo through. But how
would it stand with the same boats going through the Canal? We will
suppose that they will pay precisely the same amount. But the question
is, into whose hands will it go? Primarily to the account of the Company.
If it should so happen that the concern has reached the point of paying
dividends, a great portion will then be remitted to Europe for dividends.
From that Egypt will derive no benefit; nor from that portion of the
salaries of officials they may save, and remit to Europe; nor from what
will be paid in Europe for materials, and machinery. The officials, too,
being Europeans, and always in the end returning to Europe with their
families, will not at all increase, or improve, the human capital, or
human stock, of the country. In fact, Egypt would gain little except from
the small amount of native population that would be brought into being
to supply the food, and some of the other wants of the officials, and
others employed on the Canal. Some of these latter also, being natives,
must be reckoned as part of the gain accruing to Egypt. With these small
exceptions, Egypt is no more benefited by English ships passing through
the Canal, than it would be by a flock of wild geese flying over the
Isthmus.
But the question which concerns us is, of what use will the Canal be to
ourselves? To us it will be of very great use. First to our commerce. As
our trade with the East is taking this route as fast as steamers—which
alone can pass through the Canal and Red Sea—can be substituted for
sailing-vessels, there can be no doubt but that, on the whole, it is
advantageous for them. For this trade all kinds of sailing-vessels are
now antiquated. That it would have been better to have left things as
they were, the owners of these sailing-vessels will naturally think: but
this is a rococo thought. The P. and O. Company also will, of course,
have to accommodate their business to the new order of things. This will
be costly and inconvenient to them: and they, too, will grumble; and, for
a time, endeavour to fight against necessity. The world, however, will
not be convinced with the logic of either; nor will they be convinced
themselves with their own arguments.
The new order of things is superseding the old only for one reason, and
that reason is that the preponderance of advantages is on its side. It
does not claim the advantage in every respect. So much for the commercial
side of the question, as far as we are concerned.
It is manifest that for Southern, and Central Europe the Canal is, in
proportion to the amount of their trade, a still greater advantage than
to ourselves. It will be a great lift to Marseilles; and even in a higher
degree to some port on the Adriatic, whichever it may be that will be
found most convenient for Central Europe. It may be Trieste. It may be
Venice. It is a question of harbours, railways, and policy conjointly
considered. If it be Venice, the channel from the sea to the quays of
the Grand Canal will have to be deepened. If the German provinces of the
Austro-Hungarian empire should eventually gravitate towards Northern
Germany, it will, I suppose, be Trieste. Or, should a mid-European
railway be completed from Hamburg to Constantinople, much of the traffic
of East with West may again be attracted to the quays of the old world’s
Imperial centre.
But there is for us another question besides the commercial one: that
is the naval one. Suppose England at war with some maritime power. It
is obvious that in these times it would be impossible for us to protect
our vast eastern commerce on the open ocean. But if the whole of this
commerce be carried on through narrow seas it may be possible. These
narrow seas for the whole distance is precisely what the Canal gives
us. After having left the extreme point of China, where we have the
naval station of Hong Kong, our trade will enter the Straits, where we
have Singapore. It will then pass by Ceylon, another naval station.
Here, whatever may be coming from Calcutta and Madras will join the
main stream. It will then be forwarded to Aden, which will guard the
Red Sea; and which is, in fact, the key of the Canal. Malta will make
the Mediterranean safe. The short remainder of the voyage will be to a
great extent protected by Gibraltar, and Plymouth. Nothing could be more
complete. The Canal gives us the very thing we want: a defensible route.
From a naval point of view, a defensible route is a great gain; but very
far from being all the gain. The whole trade with Europe of India, China,
and the Straits, and a great part of that with Australia must take the
line of the Canal; and all of it must be carried in ocean steamers; that
is to say, four-fifths of all these steamers will belong to England. This
will give to us a fleet of ocean steamers outnumbering those of all the
rest of the world combined; and these will always be at our disposal for,
to say the least, the transport of troops, and of the materials of war.
Of the remaining fifth a large proportion will be built in this country,
as our resources and arrangements for the construction of iron ships and
marine engines are superior to those of any other country.
If, then, it should prove that this forecast of the advantages of the
Canal to us in war is correct, it would seem to follow that, in time of
war, we should be under the necessity of holding it ourselves; or, at all
events, of occupying its two extremities. We should be obliged to take
care that neither an enemy blocked it up, nor a friend permitted it to go
out of repair.
CHAPTER LX.
CONCLUSION.
Beatus qui intelligit.—_Book of Psalms_, VULG.
No one can see anything in Egypt except what he takes with him the
power of seeing. The mysterious river, the sight of which carries away
thought to the unknown interior of the great Continent, where solar heat,
evaporation, and condensation are working at their highest power, giving
birth abundantly to forms of vegetable and animal life with which the eye
of civilized man has yet to be delighted, and instructed; the lifeless
desert which has had so much effect in shaping, and colouring, human life
in that part of the world; the grand monuments which embody so much of
early thought and earnestness; the contrast of that artistically grand,
morally purposed, and wise past with the Egypt of to-day; the graceful
palm, and the old-world camel, so unlike the forms of Europe; the winter
climate without a chill, and almost without a cloud; all these are
certainly inducements enough to take one to Egypt; but how differently
are they seen and interpreted at the time by the different members of the
same party of travellers; and with what widely different after-thoughts
in each!
And just as many of us are dissatisfied with life’s journey itself,
if we can find no object in it, so are we with the travel to which a
fraction of it may have been devoted, if it be resultless. Should we,
when we look back upon it, be unable to see that it has had any issues
which reach into our future thought and work, it seems like a part of
life wasted. For, whatever a man may have felt at the time, he cannot,
afterwards, think it is enough that he has been amused, when the
excitement of passing through new scenes is over, and he is again in
his home,—that one spot on earth where he becomes most conscious of the
divinity that is stirring within and around him, and finds that he must
commune closely with it.
But as to particulars: that which is most on the surface of what Egypt
may teach the English traveller is the variety of Nature. It has not
the aspects of the tropics, in which the dark primæval forest, and
tangly jungle, are the predominant features; yet its green palmtufted
plain, and drab life-repelling desert, are a great contrast to our still
hedge-divided corn-fields, and meadows; to our downs, and heaths, and
hills, and streams; and so are its clear sky, and dry atmosphere to our
clouds and humidity. To see, and understand something about such things
ought, in these days, to be part of the education of all who can afford
the time and money requisite for making themselves acquainted with the
riches of Nature; which is the truest, indeed the only, way to make them
our own. In saying this, I do not at all wish to suggest the idea that
in variety, and picturesqueness of natural beauty, the scene in Egypt
is superior to what we have at home. The reverse is, emphatically, the
case. Every day I look upon pleasanter scenes than any Egypt can show:
scenes that please the eye, and touch the heart more. Nature’s form and
garb are both better here. So, too, is even the colour of her garb. To
have become familiar, then, with the outer aspects of Egypt, is not only
good in itself, as an addition to our mental gallery of the scenes of
Nature, but it is good also in the particular consequence of enabling us
to appreciate more highly the variety and the beauty of our own sea-girt
home.
Of course, however, the source of deepest interest in any scene is not
to be found in its outer aspect, but in its connexion with man. If we
regard it with the thought of the way in which man has used, modified,
and shaped it, and of how, reversely, it has modified, and shaped man,
how it has ministered to his wants, and affected the form, and character
of his life; or if we can in any way associate it with man, then we
contemplate it from quite another point of view, and with quite different
feelings. Indeed it would almost seem as if this was the real source of
the interest we take even in what we call the sublime and beautiful in
nature. Man was only repelled from snow-capped mountains, and stormy
oceans, till he had learnt to look upon them as the works of Intelligent
Mind akin to his own. Conscious of intelligence within himself, he began
to regard as grand and beautiful, what he had at length come to believe
Supreme Intelligence had designed should possess these characteristics.
This is, perhaps, the source of the sentiments of awe, and admiration,
instead of the old horror, and repugnance, with which we now contemplate
cold and inaccessible barrier Alps, and angry dividing Seas. To Homer’s
contemporaries, who believed not that the gods had created the visible
scene, but that, contrariwise, they were posterior to it, and in some
sort an emanation from it, the ocean was only noisy, pitiless, and
barren. And the modern feeling on these subjects has, of late, been
greatly intensified, and become almost a kind of religion, since men
have come to think that they have discovered that these grand objects
were brought into being by the slow and unfailing operation of certain
general laws which they have themselves ascertained. So that now, to some
extent, they have begun to feel as though they had themselves assisted at
their creation: they stood by, in imagination, as spectators, knowing,
beforehand, the whole process by which Alps and Oceans were being
formed. That they were able to discover the laws and the steps by which
Omnipotent Intelligence had brought it all about, alone and sufficiently
demonstrates the kindredness of their own intelligence. It is the
association of these ideas with natural objects that causes the present
enthusiastic feeling—almost a kind of devotion—they awaken within us,
and which would have been incomprehensible to the ancients, and even, in
a great measure, to our forefathers. They seem like our own works. They
were formed by what is, in human degree and fashion, within ourselves. We
know all about them; almost as if we had made them ourselves.
Regarded, then, in this way, it is not the object itself merely that
interests, but the associations connected with it. Not so much what is
seen, as what is suggested by what is seen. The object itself affects us
little, and in one way; the interpretation the mind puts upon it affects
us much, and in quite a different way. In this view there are reasons
why the general landscape here, at home, should be more pleasing to us
than it is in Egypt. It is associated with hope, and with the incidents
and pictures of a better life than there is, or ever has been, in Egypt.
I have already said that the natural features are not so varied and
attractive there as here; their value to us, in this respect, consisting
in their difference. But what I now have in my mind is the thought of the
landscape as associated with man; and in this other respect also I think
the inferiority of Egypt great.
The two pre-eminently grand and interesting scenes on this kind in Egypt,
where our Egyptian associations with man’s history culminate, I have
already endeavoured to present to the imagination of the reader. They are
the scene that is before the traveller when he stands somewhere to the
south-east of the Great Pyramid, looking towards Memphis, and commanding
the Necropolis in which the old Primæval Monarchy is buried, the green
valley, the river, and the two bounding ranges; or, to take it reversely,
as it appears when looked at from the Citadel of Cairo; and the scene,
for this is the other one, which is presented to the eye, again acting
in combination with the historical imagination, from the Temple-Palace
of the great Rameses at Thebes, where you have around and before you the
Necropolis, and the glories of the New Monarchy.
What, then, are the thoughts that arise in the mind at the contemplation
of these scenes? That is precisely the question I have been endeavouring
to answer throughout the greater part of the preceding pages. My object
now, as I bring them to a close, is somewhat different; it is to look at
what we have found is to be seen in Egypt from an English point of view;
with the hope that we may thus be brought to a better understanding,
in some matters, both of old Egypt and of the England of to-day. This
will best be done by comparing with the Egyptian scenes, which are now
familiar to us, the English scene which in its historical character,
and the elements of human interest it contains, occupies, at this
day, a position analogous to that which they held formerly. These are
subjects that are made interesting, and we may say intelligible, more
readily and completely by comparisons of this kind than by any other
method. Anatomical and philological comparisons do this for anatomy and
philology, and historical comparisons will do the same for history. We
shall come to understand Egypt not by looking at Egypt singly and alone,
but by having in our minds, at the time we are looking at it, a knowledge
of Israel, Greece, Rome, and of the modern world. Each must be set by the
side of Egypt.
We will come to ourselves presently. We will take Israel first. It
proposed to itself the same object as Egypt, that of building up the
State on moral foundations, only it had to do its work under enormous
disadvantages. Considering, however, the circumstances, it attained its
aims with astonishing success. We must bear in mind how in the two the
methods of procedure differed. So did their respective circumstances.
Egypt had the security which enabled it freely and fully to develop
and mature its ideas and its system. This precious period of quiet was
no part of the lot which fell to Israel. It had to maintain itself and
grow up to maturity under such crushing disadvantages as would have
extinguished the vitality of any other people, except perhaps of the
Greeks, the periods, however, of whose adolescence and manhood were
also very different from those of Israel. At those epochs of their
national life they had freedom, sunshine, and success. Israel, on the
contrary, had then, and almost uninterruptedly throughout, storm and
tempest; overthrows and scatterings. The people never were long without
feeling the foot of the oppressor on their necks. Still they held on
without bating one jot of hope or heart; and by so doing made the world
their debtors, just as did the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.
Regarding the point historically, we cannot say that one did this more
than another; for, where all are necessary, it would be illogical to
affirm that one is greater or less than another. Neither the seeing nor
the hearing, we are told, can boast that it is of more importance than
the other; for, were it not for the seeing, where would be the hearing?
and, were it not for the hearing, where would be the seeing? In the
progress of man the ideas, and principles, and experience contributed by
each of these constituent peoples of humanity were necessary: and if the
contribution of any one had been wanting, we should not be what actually
we are; and that something that we should be then would be very inferior
to what we are now. We could not dispense with the gift of any one of the
four. Egypt gave letters, and the demonstration of the fact that morality
can, within certain limits, be deliberately and designedly shaped and
made instinctive. Greece taught the value of the free development of
the intellect. Rome contributed the idea of the brotherhood of mankind,
not designedly, it is true, but only incidentally, though yet with a
glimmering that this was its mission. Without Rome we might not yet have
reached this point. Israel taught us that, if the aims of a State are
distinctly moral, morality may then be able to maintain itself, no matter
how great the disadvantages, both from within and from without, under
which the community has to labour; and even when morality is unsustained
by the thought of future rewards and punishments: a lesson which has
thrown more light on the power the moral sentiments have over man’s heart
than perhaps any other fact in the history of our race.
I bow down before the memory of the old Israelite with every feeling of
the deepest respect, when I remember that he abstained from evil from
no fear of future punishment, and that he laid down his life for truth
and justice without any calculation of a future heaven. In this view
the history of the world can show no such single-minded, self-devoted,
heroic teachers as the long line of Hebrew Prophets. They stand in an
order quite by themselves. Socrates believed that it would be well with
him hereafter. They did not touch that question. Sufficient unto them was
the consciousness that they were denouncing what was false and wrong, and
that they were proclaiming and doing what was true and right.
We will now turn to the Greeks. The interest with which they contemplated
the antique, massive, foursquare wisdom of Egypt is well worthy of
consideration. It is true they did not get much from Egypt, either in the
sphere of speculation or of practice: still for them it always possessed
a powerful attraction. The reason why it was so is not far to seek. The
Egyptians had done great things; and they had a doctrine, a philosophy
of human life. This was that philosopher’s stone the Greek mind was in
search of. And they inferred from the great things done by the Egyptians
(and this was not a paralogism) that there must be something in their
doctrine. In fact, however, they learnt little from Egypt: for if it
was the cradle, Greece itself was the Holy Land of Mind. Nor was it
possible that they could learn much from it, for the two peoples looked
upon society and the world from quite different points of view. Greece
acted on the idea that in political organization, and in the well-being
of the individual, man is the arbiter and the architect of his own
fortune. Egypt acted on the supposition that these things rested on an
once-for-all heaven-ordained system. Greece believed that truth was to be
discovered by man himself, and that it would, when discovered, set all
things right; and that freedom, investigation, and discussion were the
means for enabling men to make the needed discovery. Egypt thought that
truth had been already communicated; and that freedom, investigation, and
discussion could only issue in its overthrow. What Greece regarded as
constructive, Egypt regarded as destructive. It could not therefore learn
much from Egypt.
Rome we will now set by the side of Egypt. It will bring the two into
one view sufficiently for our purpose, if we endeavour to make out
what Germanicus must have thought of old Egypt, when he was at Thebes.
He must often have compared it with Rome; in doing which he could, of
course, only view it with the eyes of a Roman. And the time for such a
comparison had arrived, for the work of Rome, and the form and pressure
of that work upon the world, were then manifesting themselves with
sufficient distinctness. What he was in search of was light that would
aid him in governing the Roman world. Probably he came to the conclusion
that the wisdom of Egypt could be but of very little use to him. The aim
of Egypt had been all-embracing social order, maintained by morality,
compacting the whole community into a single organism, in which every
individual had his allotted place and work, neither of which he could
see any possibility of his ever abandoning, or even feel any desire to
abandon. Egyptian society had thus been brought, through every class and
member, to do its work with the regularity, the smoothness, the ease,
the combined action of all its parts, and the singleness of purpose of a
machine. I need hardly repeat that they had understood that the morality
by which their social order was to be maintained must be instinctive,
and that they had made it so. The difference between them and other
people in this matter was, that they had understood distinctly both what
they wanted for their purpose, and how to create what they had wanted.
Germanicus must have been aware, if he had seen this point clearly, that
no government could frame the general morality of the Roman Empire; and
that the single moral instinct upon which he would have to depend, if
he could create it, must be the base and degrading one of obedience and
submission brought about by fear. No attempt could be made, in the world
he expected to be called to govern, to cultivate an all-embracing scheme
of noble and generous, or even of serviceable, morality. Much, indeed,
of what was best would have to be repressed, and stamped out, as hostile
and subversive; as, for instance, the sentiment of freedom, and the
consciousness that the free and full development of a mans inner being
(in a sense the Athenian and the Christian idea) is the highest duty. He
would have to provide not for what would encourage his future subjects
to think for themselves, and to make themselves men, but for what
would indispose them to think for themselves, and would make them only
submissive subjects. He had to consider how many abundant and virulent
elements of disorder, discontent, and corruption could be kept down:
under such a system an impossible task. These evil growths of society
had, each of them, been reduced to a manageable minimum, spontaneously,
by the working of the Egyptian system; but, under the circumstances
of the Roman world, they were inevitably fostered and developed. The
application, however, of the Egyptian system to that world was out of the
question and inconceivable. So, here, Egypt could give him no help. It
could not show him how he could eliminate or regulate these evils. He
would not be able to get rid of the elements of discord and discontent in
the Egyptian fashion, by creating such instincts of order and submission
as would dispose every man to accept the position in which he found
himself as the irreversible appointment of Nature. Nor, again, would he
be able to counteract social corruption, in the Egyptian fashion, by
making virtue the aim of the state, of religion, and of human life.
There were also two other problems to the solution of which he would have
to attend. How was the ring of barbarians that beleaguered the Empire
to be kept in check? and how was the enormous military force that must
be maintained for the internal, as well as the external, defence of the
Empire to be prevented from knowing, at all events from using for its own
purposes, its irresistible, unbalanceable power? For doing every thing of
every kind he had to do, he had but one instrument, and that was force,
law being degraded into the machinery through which that force was to
act; and being also itself at discord with much that was becoming the
conscience of mankind, that is, at discord with its own proper object. He
could make no use of the Egyptian instruments, those, namely, of general
morality, of religion, and of fixed social order. The task, therefore,
that was before him, however strong the hand and clear the head might be
which would have to carry it out, was ultimately hopeless. For one of
two things must happen: either men must rebel against the order he would
have to maintain, and overthrow it, or it must corrupt and degrade men.
For, in the long run, nothing but law and religion, both in conformity
with right reason, and aiming at moral growth, can govern men; that is
to say, government must aim at human objects, to be attained by human
means. Men, of course, can be controlled otherwise, as, for instance, by
armed force, the only means that would be at the disposal of Germanicus;
but then the product is worthless. Egypt, therefore, could give him no
assistance. It could only tell him that the task before him was to him an
unattainable one. It was not the one the Egyptians had taken in hand, nor
could it be carried out by Egyptian means. A great fight had to be fought
out in the bosom of Roman society, and under such conditions that its
progress and issue would be the ruin and overthrow of society, as then
constituted.
We all know that the man who, in a period of dearth, withholds his corn
for a time, is thinking only of himself, though it eventually turns
out that what he did was done unintentionally for the benefit of the
community: a law, above and beyond him, had been working through him,
and shaping his selfish act so that it should contribute to the general
good. So was it with the Roman Empire. It subjugated and welded together
all people merely to satisfy its own greed, but in so doing it had
further unfolded and advanced the world-drama of human history. When it
had played out its part, it was seen that that part could not have been
dispensed with, because, though so hard for those times, it was essential
to the great plot, for it was that that had given birth to, and brought
to maturity, the sentiment of the unity and brotherhood of mankind.
And now at last we come to ourselves. All, including Egypt, have become
teachers to us. We are the inheritors of the work of all. To us—and how
pleasant is it to know this—the wisdom even of old Egypt is not quite a
Dead Sea apple, something pretty to look at, but inside only the dust
of what had been the materials of life. We can feel our connexion with
Egypt, and that we are in its debt; and we shall not be unworthy of the
connexion, and of the debt (a true debt, for we are benefited through
what they did), if we so make use of them as that those who shall come
after us shall have reason to feel that they, too, are, in like manner,
debtors to ourselves. Inquiries of this kind enable us to discover what
are the historical, which means the natural and actual, bases of our own
existing civilization.
What we now have to do is to compare ourselves with old Egypt. Things of
this kind become more intelligible when made palpable to sense by being
taken in the concrete. We have looked on the scenes in Egypt which are
invested with an interest that can never die, because it is an interest
that belongs to the history of humanity. By the side of them we must set
the scene in the England of to-day, which holds the analogous position.
Of course it must be in London. And as it must be in London I know no
better point at which we can place ourselves than on the bridge over the
Serpentine, with our back upon Kensington, so that we may look over the
water, the green turf, and the trees to the towers of the old Abbey and
of the Palace of Westminster. The view here presented to us is one which
obliges us, while looking at it, to combine with what is actually seen
what we know is lying behind and beyond it. It is not a scene for which
an otiose glance will suffice, because it is precisely the connexion
between what is before the eye, and what is to be understood, that gives
it its distinguishing interest.
What is immediately before you, in its green luxuriance of turf and leaf,
is peculiarly English; you might imagine yourself miles away from any
city, and yet you are standing in the midst of the largest collection of
human beings ever brought together upon the earth: what is around you is
hardly more the capital of England than of the world. Strange is it to
find yourself in the midst of such an incomprehensible mass of humanity,
and yet at the same time in the midst of a most ornate scene of natural
objects—water, trees, turf. Just as in the Egyptian scenes, where the
interests of its history are brought to a focus, the preponderant objects
presented to the eye are graves and temples in the desert, which tell
us of how religious and sombre a cast was the thought of the Egyptians,
who could see nothing in the world but God, and could regard life only
in connexion with death; so here, too, we find, as we take our stand
in the midst of this English world-capital, that we can see nothing of
it; that it is hid from our eyes by the country enclosed within it.
This alone tells us something about the people. It intimates to us that
those who have built this world-wonder have not their heart in it; that
it is against the grain for them to be here: they do not love it: they
do not care to make it beautiful: that, unlike their Latin neighbours,
they are not a city-loving people; that the first and strongest of their
affections are for the green fields, the wavy trees, and the running
streams; and that they have, therefore, reproduced them, as far as they
could, in the midst of the central home of their political life, to
remind them of what they regard as the pleasanter and the better life.
But it is strange that this very fondness for rural life is one of the
causes that have contributed to the greatness of this city. It has been
the love of Nature, and the hardihood of mind and body the people have
acquired in their country life, which have disposed them to go forth
to occupy the great waste places of the earth; and so have helped in
enabling the Nature-and-country-loving English race to build up an
Empire, out of which has grown this vast, but from the spot where we are
standing in the midst of it invisible, city.
Each also of the two great buildings, whose towers are seen above the
trees, has much to tell us about ourselves. There is the old Abbey,
reminding us of the power religion has had and will ever have over
us, though not now in the Egyptian fashion of something that has been
imposed upon us, but rather of something that is accepted by us; and of
our determination that it shall not be constructed out of the ideas and
fixed for ever in the forms which belong to ages that, in comparison with
our own really older and riper times, had something to learn, and not
everything to teach. It is precisely the attempt to invest Christianity
with Egyptian aims and claims, fixity and forms, which is arraying men’s
minds and hearts against it; and, in some parts of Christendom, making
the action of society itself hostile to it. It is this attempt which
is in a great measure depriving it of the attractiveness and power it
possessed in its early days when it was rightly understood: though then
it was, necessarily, not only a private care, but one that had also to
strive hard to maintain its existence against the fierce and contemptuous
antagonism of the collective force of the old pagan form and order of
society. If men are now turning away from what they once gladly received,
it can only be because what is now offered to them has ceased to be what
it was then—the interpretation, and expression, and the right ordering,
of all that they knew, and of the aspirations of their better nature. The
phenomenon is explained, if we have reason for believing that men then
regarded Christianity as an honest organization of knowledge, thought,
and morality, for the single purpose of raising and bettering human
life, but now regard it as, in some measure, their priestly organization
for the purpose, primarily, of maintaining priestly domination, through
the maintenance of a system which was the growth of widely different
times and circumstances.
It cannot be seen too clearly, or repeated too often, that Christianity
did not originate in any sense in priestly thought, but was, on
the contrary, a double protest against it, first in its own actual
inception, which included a protest against priest-perverted Judaism,
and antecedently in the primary conception of the previous dispensation,
which included a protest against priestly Egyptianism; so that neither in
itself, nor in its main historical source, could it originally have had
any priestly or ecclesiastical, but only broadly human and honestly moral
aims.
This will, by the way, assist us in forming a right estimate of the
character of that _argumentum ad ignorantiam_ we have heard so much
of lately, that Protestantism is only a negation of truth, and an
inspiration of the Principle of Mischief. Looking back along the line
of our own religion, we find that Moses, speaking historically, was
the first Protestant; and that the Saviour of the World was, in this
respect also, like unto him. As, indeed, have been, and will be, more
or less, in the corrupt, but though corrupt, yet still, on the whole,
advancing currents of this world, all who are wise and good, and who
have the courage of their wisdom and goodness. It will also assist
us to understand that religion does not mean systematic Theology and
organized priestly domination, which are its degeneration, and into
which the ignorance and carelessness of the mass of mankind, and
the short-sightedness of some, and self-seeking of others, of its
constituted expounders are tending always to corrupt it; but that it
means, above all things, the ideal theory of perfect morality and virtue,
combined with the attempt to work it out practically in human life, so
far as is possible, under the difficulties and hindrances of this world,
supported by the good hope of its actual complete realization in a better
world to come.
The history of old Egypt is very much the history of the character,
working, and fate of the priestly perversion (as we must regard it
now) of religion, even when the attempt is made, as it was in that
case, honestly, and without any violation or contradiction of the
original principles and aims of the religion. As respects the modern
world, the lamentable and dangerous consequences of this perversion of
religion are to be traced, in some form or other, in the actual moral
and intellectual condition of perhaps every part of Christendom. We
see indications of them amongst ourselves in individuals, and even in
classes. The legitimate action of religion has been in many cases not
merely neutralized and lost, but directly reversed. It ought to generate
the instincts that contribute to the order, the unity, the building up
of society; whereas, by aiming at ecclesiasticism, and endeavouring
to retain what is at variance with its own true purpose, it has given
rise to unavowed repugnances, to fierce antagonisms, to repulsion of
class from class, and even among some of hatred to the very order of
Society; that is to say, it has produced instincts that contribute, and
that most energetically, to disorder, disunion, and the overthrow of
Society; proving the truth of the saying that nothing is so bad as the
corruption of that which is best. Religion is the _summa philosophia_
which interprets, harmonizes, systematizes, and directs to the right
ordering of Society, and of the individual, all knowledge from whatever
source derived, all true and honest thought, all noble aspirations, all
good affections. Development and growth ever have been, and ever must be,
a law of its existence: nothing else can maintain its continuity. And
as, notwithstanding this necessity of development, its end and aim must
all the while, and for ever, be one and the same, development and growth
do not and cannot mean the overthrow of religion, as some have told us,
and will continue to tell us, but, on the contrary, the enlargement and
strengthening of its foundations, and the better ordering and furnishing
of the superstructure.
The very name of the building before us—The Abbey—reminds us that, as
far as we ourselves are concerned, we have accepted and acted on the
principle of development, adaptation, and correction in our religion.
The old name, belonging to a past order of things, is evidence that this
principle has once been applied; and so it supplies us with a ground
for hope that it will be applied again, whenever a similar necessity
may arise. History, indeed, assures us that this must be done always,
sooner or later, for in all ages and places the religion of any people
has ever been, in the end, what the knowledge of the people made it;
but it makes a great difference whether what has to be done be done
soon, or whether it be done late. If the former, then the continuity of
growth and development is not interrupted. If the latter, then there
intervenes a long period of intellectual and moral anarchy, of religious
and irreligious conflict. The consequences and the scars of the conflict
are seen in what is established eventually. It is found that some things
that were good have perished; and that some that are not good have become
inevitable.
By the side of the old Abbey rise the towers of the Palace of
Westminster—a new structure on an old site. That which first occurs to
the beholder, who has old Egypt in his thoughts, is its inferiority in
artistic effect to the stupendous but simple grandeur of the Egyptian
Priests’ House of Parliament in the hypostyle Hall of Karnak, with its
_entourage_ of awe-inspiring temples, its vast outer court, and its lofty
propylons. In that hall he had felt that its great characteristic was not
so much its grandeur as its truthfulness to its purpose, of which there
is not one trace to be found in the home of our great National Council,
which one might survey carefully, both internally and externally, without
obtaining the slightest clue for enabling him to guess for what purpose
it was designed. But how grand, I hesitate to say how much grander,
is the history which the site, at all events, of the building we are
looking at brings into our thoughts. It has not indeed numbered the
years of the Egyptian Panegyries. They might have counted theirs by
thousands, while our Assembly counts its by hundreds. And we must also
remember that they assisted at the birth, and watched by the cradle, of
political wisdom. True they swathed the infant in the bands of a fixed
religious system; but, then, they could not have done otherwise; and
what they did, under the restrictions and limitations which times and
circumstances imposed upon them, was, notwithstanding, good and precious
work; and we comparing that work of theirs with much that has since been
done, and is now doing, see that, though it was crippled and distorted
at every step by their evil necessities, it was done wisely, and well,
by men who clearly understood what they wanted to do, and how it was to
be done. Our Parliament had to do its work under very different and even
opposite conditions. This island—indeed, this part of the world—was not
an Egypt where none but corporations of priests and despotic rulers
could be strong. We could not, on the contrary, be without chieftains’
strongholds, and strong towns, too. While, therefore, with us the armed
possessors of these strong places accepted religion, they could resist
and forbid ecclesiastical encroachments, and could thus save Society,
through saving the State, from ecclesiastical domination. They were
strong and free, and so could nurture freedom, instead of standing by and
looking on while it was strangled and buried out of sight. They were,
too, the heirs of Israelite, Greek, Roman, and German traditions; and
these they could keep alive, even without quite understanding them, until
the day came when they might be carried out more fully and harmoniously;
and more might be made of them than had been possible even in the days,
and in the countries, which had given them birth. That has been the
slow but glorious _rôle_ in human history of these English Parliaments,
of which that Palace of Westminster at which you are looking is the
shrine: a spot most sacred in human history, and which will be closely
interesting to the generations that are to come when time shall have
forgot the great Hall of the Panegyries of Egypt; for the History of the
freedom of Religion, of Speech, and of the Press, of Commerce, and of
political and almost of human freedom itself, is the History of these
English Parliaments.
The History, then, of these two buildings throws much useful light on
the history of the later phases of the progressive relations to each
other of the State and of the Church; and of the rights, the duties, the
proper field, and the legitimate work of each. The questions involved
in these points have been answered very differently at different times,
in accordance with the varying conditions of society: but the answers
given have, on the whole, been such as to assist us in understanding
two particulars of importance: first, that the character of the relation
of the two to each other among any given people, and at any given time,
is dependent on the conditions of society, then and there; on the point
knowledge has reached; the degree to which it has been disseminated;
and on the course antecedent events have taken. (The relation, at any
time established, does, of course, re-act on the conditions which gave
rise to it, and so has some effect in shaping, and colouring, their
character in the proximate future.) And, in the second place, that there
is observable, throughout History, if its whole range be included in our
view, a regular evolution and ever-growing solution of the great question
itself.
All the peculiarities, and particulars of the history, of these two
buildings, such, for instance, as that they stand side by side, and yet
are quite distinct from one another; that the Ecclesiastical building is
very old, very ornate, and imposing, and was very costly; and that the
Civil building is modern, but on an old site; that it too was costly, and
is very ornate and imposing, and in its ornamentation and aspects affects
somewhat the Ecclesiastical style; that they are in the hands of distinct
orders of men belonging to the same community; that the work carried on
in them is quite distinct, and yet that ultimately their respective work
is meant to contribute, by different paths, and with different sanctions,
to the same end, that is to say, the bettering of man’s estate—all this
symbolizes with sufficient exactness the history and character of the
conflicts, and of the relations, past and present, of the Church and of
the State amongst ourselves.
I am here taking the word Church in its widest, most intelligible, and
only useful sense—and which is the interpretation history puts on the
phenomena the word stands for—that of the conscious organization of the
moral and intellectual forces and resources of humanity for a higher
life than that which the State requires and enforces. It is untrue, and
as mischievous as untrue, to talk of Religion—that is, the effect on
men’s lives of the doctrine which the Church has elaborated—as if it
were something apart, something outside the natural order of things,
something up in the air, something of yesterday, which has no root in
man’s nature, and the history of which is, therefore, not coincident with
the history of man. Like every thing else of which we have any knowledge,
it is the result of certain causes. And in the case of this effect,
of which the Church is the personal embodiment, the affiliation is
distinct and palpable. Poetry and Philosophy are as much manifestations
of it, as what we call Religion, when we are employing the word in its
popular, restricted signification. They do, indeed, so entirely belong
to it that there could be no advance in Religion, I might almost say
no Religion at all, without them. And, conversely, Religion supplies
to the bulk of mankind all the Poetry and Philosophy that will ever be
within their reach. Poetry (which uses Art as one of its instruments of
expression), dealing with things both objectively, as they appear to
address themselves to us, and subjectively, as they are seen through
the medium of our own sentiments; and Philosophy, dealing with the
_ensemble_ of things as they are in themselves—the two, working in these
ways, and endeavouring to organize sentiment and knowledge, or, in other
words, human thought and the world of external facts, for the sovereign
purpose of nurturing and developing our moral being, if they do not give
rise to Religion, yet have, at all events, largely contributed towards
expanding, purifying, and shaping it. Every one can see how Philosophy
and Poetry contributed each its part to the construction of the Old
Dispensation. It is equally plain that Christianity originally rested
on a profoundly philosophical view of the Old Dispensation, considered
in connexion with the then new conditions of the world. And it was,
precisely, because the view taken was so profound, because it went so
completely to the bottom of all that then and there had to be dealt with,
that it was felt and seen to be thoroughly true. For the same reason it
was as simple as it was true. And it was because it was so entirely in
accord with man’s nature and history, and with the conditions on which
the world had then entered, that it was understood to be, and received
as, a Revelation from God. This was the internal evidence. And in the
old Classic world, which we can now contemplate _ab extra_, and without
prepossession, we see that the only teachers of Religion were first
Poetry, and then Philosophy: at first mainly the former, and afterwards
mainly the latter. And thus were they the means by which the outer world,
at all events, was prepared for Christianity.
If, then, we take the word Church in the sense I am now proposing (and
I am concerned here only with the interpretation History gives of the
phenomenon), it will help us to understand how it happens that every
Church, at certain stages in its career, comes into conflict with the
State, or the State with the Church; and, too, how it happens that, at
certain conjunctures, the action of the State, as it is, is to restrict
and to thwart the action of the Church, as it should be; and why it is
that, in the end, the latter must always carry the day. It will also
lead us to think that in the future the Clergy will not have the entire
decision of religious questions; but that, strange as it may sound to
us, the Poet, the Historian, and the Philosopher will, sooner or later,
be able to make their ideas felt in the discussion and shaping of these
matters. It has been so in the past; and we may suppose that it will be
so again in the future. Even now the lay Prophet has no insignificant
auditory, and it is one that it is growing rapidly in every element
of influence. We have no reason for believing that the world will be
content to leave, for ever, its own highest affair in the hands of those
only whose function, as understood and interpreted, at present, by the
majority of themselves, is to witness to what were the thoughts of their
own order, in an age when that order thought for mankind; and did so,
sometimes, not in complete accordance with the common heart, conscience,
and aspirations of mankind, certainly not with what they are now, but
rather with what the Church supposed would complete and strengthen its
own system; at all events, always in accordance with the insufficient
knowledge, sometimes even with the mistaken ideas, of times when the
materials supplied by the then existing conditions of society, and by the
then state of knowledge, for the solution of the problem, were not the
same as those supplied by our own day.
In old Egypt—under the circumstances it could not possibly have been
otherwise—the Church administered, and was, the State: the State was
contained within it. The distinction between things civil and things
religious had not emerged yet. This fact deeply modified the whole being
of the Church. Its resultant colour thus came to be compounded of its
own natural colour and of that of the State. This primæval phase can
never again recur. The increase and dissemination of knowledge; the
idea and the fact of civil as opposed to ecclesiastical, we may almost
say of human as opposed to divine legislation, and the now thoroughly
well ascertained advantage of the maintenance of civil order by civil
legislation, have made the primæval phase, henceforth, impossible among
Europeans, and all people of European descent. We may add, that it has,
furthermore, become impossible now on account of the higher conception
that has been formed of the duty and of the work of the Church itself.
The Middle Ages present to our contemplation the curious and instructive
picture of a long-sustained effort, made under circumstances in many
respects favourable to the attempt, and which was attended by a very
considerable amount of success, to revert to and to re-establish the old
Egyptian unspecialized identity of the two. This effort was in direct
contradiction to the relation in which the early Christian Church had
placed itself to the State; though, of course, it was countenanced,
apparently, by the early history of the Hebrew Church, which, like that
of Egypt, had necessarily embraced, and contained within itself, the
State, in the form and fashion that had belonged to the requirements of
those times. That it had been so with it, however, only shows, when we
regard the fact, as we can now, historically, that society, there and
then, was in so rudimentary a condition, that its two great organs of
order, progress, and life had not yet been specialized; the ideas and
means requisite for this advance not having been at that time, among the
Hebrews, in existence.
The State, here, amongst ourselves, had, throughout the whole of this
middle period, been asserting that it had a domain in which it was
supreme; that the Church had usurped a great part of this domain, and was
still endeavouring to extend its usurpations; and that there could be
no peace till the whole of this usurped ground had been recovered. At
last the State became sufficiently enlightened and strong to establish
its supremacy in the domain it claimed; and to estop the Church from its
usurpations. This was a great gain. The work, however, was very far from
having been completed. What was done, though much, was in truth only a
beginning. What further was required was that the State should forthwith
address itself to the discharge of the high and fruitful duties that
belonged to the position it had assumed. But the fact was that it did not
yet fully and clearly perceive either what had become its own sphere,
rights, and duties, or what had become the sphere, rights, and duties of
the Church. Some, indeed, of the conceptions it formed on these points
were entirely erroneous, as both the teaching of History—now better
understood—and the inconveniences, the evils, and the necessities of
our present condition have since demonstrated. The correction of these
errors is a very important part of the task of the present generation.
The unsettled character of the actual relation of the State and of the
Church to each other, and the resultant uneasiness and tenderness felt by
each, and the way in which, by these causes, each is at present crippled
for much good it might be doing, are to be attributed to these errors.
These are matters in which History is our only guide and interpreter.
A knowledge of the origin, nature, aims, and fortunes of this long
conflict in past times, enables us to understand its present position,
and to foresee its future course. We are at a certain point in a chain of
events: and nothing throws light on the events that are coming except the
events that have been now evolved.
When ideas, through their having been traditional for many generations,
have got a strong hold on men’s thoughts and feelings, it is impossible
to break away from them, and in some matters to face in the very
opposite direction, at a moment. Ideas grow, and decay: they are
not subject to instantaneous transformations, like the figures in a
kaleidoscope. This explains the partial acquiescence by the State in the
theory that the Church was only the State acting in another capacity: as
it were a committee of the whole House for some politically necessary
objects; and with an authority that must be maintained. There was merely
a colourable amount of truth in this. Practically, and relatively to
the condition society had reached, it was a mistake; and one that was
unworkable in every particular. The Church, whatever might have been the
case in the early stages of society, is not now the State in another
capacity. It has ceased to have now any directly political objects. It
has no authority in the sense in which the State has: the authority of
the State being such as can be enforced by pains and penalties, and by
physical constraints; whereas the authority of the Church is only that of
moral and of intellectual truth—as much as, and no more than, it claimed
eighteen hundred years ago. In this matter its present advantages are
that it has not to contend for existence against hostile established
religions, and a consequently hostile tone of morality and of society;
for what is now generally recognized, in the moral order, is precisely
its own principles.
The logical and practical issue of this mistake was the mischievous
conclusion that the teaching of all morality, including that which is
necessary for the order and well-being of modern societies, must be
left exclusively to the Church; and that the State must confine its own
action to the repression of crime, and to the protection of person and
of property; and this only by the way of punishment. Now each of these
two propositions has, in a certain sense, and from a certain point of
view, though not those belonging to these times, enough plausibility to
enable a kind of defence of it to be set up; but, at the same time, each
contains such an amount of real falsity to the existing circumstances and
conditions of society, as to issue in incalculable mischief both to the
State and to the Church; both in what it has caused, and is causing, to
be done, and in what it has hindered, and is hindering, from being done.
This was a mistake which assigned to the Church work, which what have
now become its constitution, its real objects, and the means and forces
at its disposal, incapacitate it from doing; and which led the State to
abdicate what is now its highest, and really paramount, function. It
put both the Church and the State in a wrong position, and on a wrong
path. It enfeebled, depraved, and shackled both. It brought them into
inevitable conflict with each other. It made them both aim at what
could never be more than very imperfectly attained by the means they
were respectively endeavouring to employ. Its results were confusion,
anarchy, and failure. Hence came about the neglect by the State of
national education. And hence the claims of the Church to educate the
nation. Hence the fierce contradictions to these claims, expressed in a
blind demand, as if that were the only way of effectually contradicting
them, for secular education, that is to say, for the exclusion of
morality from education, and its limitation to an acquaintance with the
instruments of knowledge, plus a little physical instruction. This would
make things far worse than they are at present. It would be prohibiting
the acquisition, by those who are now the depositories of power, of
the knowledge and sentiments requisite for its right use. It would be
creating, and setting at work, in the midst of us, the most efficient
machinery imaginable for the general demoralization of the community. It
would be going some way towards transforming the commonwealth into an
aggregation of wild beasts, but of wild beasts possessed of knowledge and
reason. The concession of this by the State would be the renunciation of
its first and most imperative duty. Hence, in short, all the imbroglio
and the evils of the present situation of this great question; and all
the misunderstandings and hot conflicts between those on the one hand,
whom logic, working with wrong data, has made secularists, but to the
exclusion of secular morality, the chief point of all, and, on the other
hand, those whose fealty to what is highest and best, and should be
supreme in man’s nature, even when regarded only as a political animal,
has obliged them to enrol themselves as supporters of (I am afraid we
must say internecine) denominational teaching in the education of the
people. It is obvious that, as it is the duty of the State to regard the
community as a single family, and to endeavour to bring its members to
act harmoniously together, it would be better, both theoretically and
practically, to exclude the inculcation of these differences from the
Schools of the State: that, if it must come, would come with less evil
from the denominations themselves.
But truth, reason, right, and History must in the end triumph. It is the
duty of the State, and we rigidly exact from it the performance of it,
to punish and repress crime: it must, therefore, be its duty, but this
we will not allow it to perform, to teach that kind of morality which
manifestly has a tendency to prevent the commission of crime. The evil
is done when the crime has been committed: _à fortiori_, then, it is
better to prevent than to punish it. It is the duty of the State, and
we energetically insist on its being discharged effectually, to protect
person and property: _à fortiori_, then, it must be its duty to teach
that morality which shall dispose men to respect the rights of person and
of property. It is the duty of the State to do what it can, within its
own sphere, to promote the well-being of its members; we may presume,
then, that it is its duty to teach that morality which shall have a
tendency, above every thing else the State can do, to secure this great
object. How can it be argued that the State does rightly and wisely in
neglecting the one means which stands first in the order of nature,
and which is emphatically the most efficient, for bringing about its
great paramount object? To deny that the means for doing this duty are
within its sphere, is to deny that it has any duty at all, except that
of punishing. Possibly such means may not be within the sphere, as some
define it, of the political Economist. But, though a Statesman ought to
be a political Economist, he ought to be something besides. And it may be
very bad political Economy to allow in these days the mass of the people
to be vicious. This may, in the highest degree, be destructive of wealth.
But, at all events, what the Statesman has to lay his measures for is
the well-being of the community, of which wealth is only one ingredient;
and which, too, may be so distributed, and so used, and productive of
such effects and influences, looking at the community generally, as on
the whole not to promote its well-being. At all events, man, even when
regarded in his social capacity exclusively, does not live either by, or
for, bread alone.
The present condition of society is never to be lost sight of. And the
two most prominent elements of its present condition are the general
diffusion, throughout all classes, of political power, which almost means
that the decision of political questions has been entrusted to the most
ignorant and uninstructed, because they are the most numerous, part of
the community; and the fact that every member of the community is now
required to think, and to act, and to take charge of, and to provide for
himself. Here are two reasons, which have made it as much the duty of the
State to teach, as to repress, and to punish; for knowledge, and this
means pre-eminently moral knowledge, has become quite as necessary to it
for self-preservation. Though, indeed, punishment is a mode of teaching,
and the policeman and the magistrate are a kind of teachers; but it is as
unreasonable, as suicidal, to have recourse to no other mode of teaching,
and to no other kind of teachers.
I think, then, that none but unstatesmanlike Economists will deny that
it is the duty of the State to see to the education of the whole people.
The Egyptian Priest, and the Hebrew Prophet, never made, nor could have
made, a mistake of this kind; to their apprehension the right training
of the people was the paramount duty of a Government—the very purpose
and object for which it existed. This must, amongst ourselves, be given
mainly in schools established everywhere. We have now at last got so far
as to attempt their general establishment. The schools, however, are only
machinery; and the great question is, what kind of work this machinery
is to do? and the State will not discharge properly its duty in this
all-important matter, if it does not take care that the schools shall
teach the morality indispensably required, under existing conditions,
for the well-being of society. This morality means the principles of
Justice, Truth, Temperance, Honesty, Manliness, Forbearance, Considerate
Kindliness, Industry, Thrift, Foresight, Responsibility. These are
political and social, and perhaps also economical, necessities of modern
communities. They are now the first great wants of society. Speaking
generally, they can be taught to the masses of the people, and to the
whole people, best, and, in fact, only by the State. Every one, I think,
must be ready to acknowledge, that if the State, during the last fifty
years, had seen to their having been taught, so far as schools and early
training could have taught them, to the population of this country, we
should be in a widely different position—all the difference being on the
right side—from that in which we are at this day.
It is just because the State has made, at best, only half-hearted
attempts to do any part of this work, and has even at times loudly
proclaimed that it saw that it was not its duty to undertake it, that is
to say that it was its duty to renounce its most important duty, that
that part of the community in which the moral instinct predominates,
has turned to Church organizations, and called upon them to undertake
it. And this is a reason why many of this class have been attracted
to that particular branch of the Church which advances, most loudly,
the most unqualified claims to the superintendence of the whole domain
of morality, not making any distinction between that which is social,
civil, and political, and that which belongs to the higher sphere of the
spiritual life. Had the State seen its duty in this great matter, and
endeavoured to act up to it, nothing of this kind would, or could, have
occurred. On the contrary: the wisest and best part of the community
would have supported it in carrying out what it had undertaken, with
their whole heart and soul.
Of course it is a mistake to look to the Church for this kind of work.
Neither the Church of Rome, nor any other Church, either in this, or in
any other, country, has the means necessary for enforcing this kind of
teaching, or even for bringing it home, generally, to the bulk of the
population, that is to say to the very part of it which most needs it.
Nor under any conjuncture of circumstances, which can be imagined as
possible, will they have the means for doing it. And even further, if
the powers necessary for the purpose could be conferred upon them, it
would be putting them in a false position to call upon them to undertake
this mundane, political work. Besides that, the false positions into
which events and circumstances have already, more or less, brought all
Churches, have so damaged their credit with large proportions of the
population, in all the foremost nations of the world, as that their
teaching of this kind would not, generally, be received, would even be
strenuously resisted; and it would still further weaken them, were they
to attempt to teach these things for these purposes. It would bring them
before the world as mere instruments of national police—a position that
is now so utterly and glaringly at discord with the purpose and idea
of a Church, that its assumption would go a long way towards obscuring
altogether in men’s minds that purpose, and that idea; far too much in
that direction having been done already. We know how disastrous an effect
the assumption, to some extent, of this position has had, in this and
other countries, on some branches of the Church. This is true now, and
will continue to be so, till the Church shall have become an organization
in which all of us, laity as well as clergy, women as well as men, who
shall be animated by the desire for the higher moral and spiritual life,
shall find ready for us places and work; and until, in this matter, the
first effort amongst us shall not be to secure this-world power, and
social and political position, which must always be accompanied by
separations and antagonisms, and is demoralizing, and destructive of the
very idea of a Church; but to reform and improve, and to lift above the
world; an effort which is actively and fruitfully moral, and of the very
essence of the work of a Church. This is truly spiritual work.
Taking things, then, as they are, any Church would be but a bad and
inefficient teacher of the political, we may even call it the secular,
kind of morality we are now thinking about. While every one can see
that, as it is an affair of the State, and comes within its sphere, and
is useful for its purposes; and as it is the duty, and the interest, of
the State to teach it; and as the State has, and alone has, the power
of teaching it, it might be well and properly taught by the State. But
it may also be remarked that no Church can afford to give to this work
of the State the first place in its thoughts and efforts. Every branch
of the Church, from the greatest down to the least, must be occupied,
primarily, by its own necessities. Self-preservation is the first law
of nature, in the case of Churches as well as of every thing else that
has life. The first care, therefore, as things now are, of every Church
must be to maintain and enforce its own system; and, as part of the same
effort, to weaken those whose systems are opposed to its own. This,
however disguised, must be a main object with all of them. That it is so,
is very disastrous for Churches; still it is a necessity of their present
position. And the efforts that arise out of this necessity can, at the
best, be only non-moral: in truth, one cannot but think that they must
generally be demoralizing, and even immoral: at all events, they can only
be made at the expense of the higher morality, which is the true domain
of the Church. But, however much this point may be controverted, the
other is an obvious fact, and incontrovertible, that no Church has the
power of teaching to the community, and this is especially true of the
most numerous and least instructed part of the community, that morality
which is now necessary for the well-being of political societies. In
this matter there is a wide difference between past and present times.
Formerly this teaching, however desirable it might have been, was not
indispensable under the old restrictive and paternal systems of society.
All that has now passed away. We have drifted from those moorings, and
out of those harbours. Our population has been agglomerated into large
masses; and these masses have been put into a position to exercise the
power which resides in numbers. Every one, too, is now called upon, and
this is a most important element in the consideration of what ought to be
done, to take care of himself. No class is now put in charge of another
class. The moral training, therefore, which these conditions require has
become the paramount object and first duty of the State; and, one way or
another, perhaps the highest personal mundane interest of every member
of the community; and all would do well to demand from the State the
discharge of this duty.
That the State should awake to a sense of its duty in this matter, and
act up to that awakened sense, would be no encroachment on the domain
of the Church. In so doing, indeed, it would set free, and strengthen,
the Church for its own proper work. The State cannot do the work of the
Church, any more than the Church can do the work of the State. Each has
now, distinctly, marked out for it its own sphere, its own aims, its own
rights, and its own duties. The world is rapidly advancing to a correct
understanding of all this. Each should, properly, by attending to and
doing its own work, help the other. Each is necessary to the other. The
morality the State has charge of is that which, obviously, contributes
to the right ordering and prosperity of the commonwealth generally,
and of its members individually. It is such as can be expounded, and
made intelligible to all and acceptable to many. Much of it too can be
enforced on all. Not, of course, in the old Egyptian fashion, but in a
fashion which is in accord with the conditions of modern societies.
There can be few things more mistaken and ridiculous than to urge that
the Master of a School, because he is a layman, cannot teach such
morality as the State requires for its own maintenance, and for the
well-being of its members. He is just as capable as the Minister of
Religion, or as any body else, of learning his own proper work. The point
that really needs to be seen clearly is that the proper work of the State
School Master, and of the Minister of Religion, so differ, as that each
is incapable of teaching fully and rightly what ought to be taught by the
other. The Minister of Religion puts himself quite in a false position,
and contradicts the idea of his office, when he undertakes the work of
the State; and the School Master goes out of his way, and passes beyond
the work of the State, when he enters on the ground of the Minister of
Religion. From the time that civil societies existed, or that men had
come to act from a sense of duty, all well disposed Fathers of families,
not excluding Masters of Schools, have deemed themselves qualified to
teach, and have taught, with more or less success, to their children such
ethics as they themselves had attained to a knowledge of, and thought
desirable. Let any one refer to the duties I just now enumerated, as
socially and politically necessary in these days; and, when he has
considered what they are, will he be disposed to assert that a man of
ordinary intelligence, the business of whose life it is to teach, whose
attention has been particularly directed to this subject, and who has
studied it with the knowledge that he must teach it, will, after all, be
unable to teach it? Or would any teacher, with that list in his hand, say
that it never would be in his power to give lessons on each of the heads
it contains; and to see that the practice of the pupils corresponded
with what he taught? If the Clergy could do this, why not the Masters
of Schools? The fact, however, is that the Clergy cannot, and that the
Masters of Schools can.
Nothing else that is taught in Schools can be taught so naturally, so
easily, and so surely. Almost everything that occurs, or that is done,
supplies ground for a lesson on the subject. In nothing else that we
have to teach do we find a foundation laid for our teaching already, as
it is here, in the instinctive moral sentiments which have, some how
or other, come to be, or, if not, which may be made to be, a part of
the pupil’s nature. The discipline, too, of life here again aids the
teacher in a manner, which is not the case in anything else he has to
teach. The Ethics the State requires may be taught, as the occasion in
any, and each, case will suggest to the teacher, either practically,
or dogmatically, or scientifically; either with a reference at the
moment to the principle of utility, or to the voice of conscience, or to
experience. Lessons of this kind may also be set forth in Parables, or
illustrative stories: a large proportion of the reading lessons now used
in Schools have this aim. Nor would there be many who would object to
reference being made, in the teaching of the State School-Master, to the
Religious ground, that is to say, to the future life: though of course it
is manifest that this would belong rather to the teaching of the Church
and of the Minister of Religion. Practically, however, that is with
respect to the substance and form of the virtues taught, there would be
no antagonism between the two: for even with respect to Charity, which
Religion elevates above Justice, the layman would still have something
to say in the same sense, for he would show that the kindliness, and
consideration for others, he taught supplemented and went beyond Justice.
Indeed, what antagonism could there be, seeing that our ideas of the
several virtues, wherever they differ from what Aristotle or Cicero would
have taught, are what our Religion has made them to all of us alike?
The chief difference, indeed, I can make out would be a very small one,
for it would be the importance the lay-teacher would have to assign to
industry and thrift, secondary virtues of which popular Religion does not
take much notice: an oversight which, of course, arises out of popular
misapprehensions, such, for instance, as those we are all familiar with
in respect of the purpose and character of the present life, of the
meaning of faith, and of the teaching of Jesus Christ on the subject of
Divine interposition in the current affairs of life.
But, however, this little difference, though indeed it happens to be one
that must ultimately disappear, for it arises out of a misconception,
will help us to understand the difference between the morality the State
requires and that which the Church presents to us. The former is limited
to what is useful politically and socially, and for mundane purposes;
while that of which the Church has charge (there being ultimately no
real contradiction between the two) consists of the same principles,
only purified, elevated, and rendered more fruitful by the action of
higher motives. It is that which is in thought perfect; the morality of
the kingdom of God, that is of those who have been brought to understand
that they have a citizenship which is not of this world, and whose
conversation is above. It is that morality which is cast in the mould of
the ideas we endeavour to form of the moral attributes of the Deity; or
rather the application of that to our own present condition: its members
endeavour to form God within themselves. This cannot be enforced. The
idea of constraint contradicts its nature. Its motives are found in
men’s spontaneously engendered conceptions of moral perfection; and in
the hope of a future life, which alone can supply a stage and conditions
suitable for the complete realization of such conceptions. The rights of
the Church are those of humanity to complete freedom in its effort to
advance and purify its ideal of the moral and spiritual life. This has
been its work from the beginning, though in the early stages of society
it embraced the State, and has subsequently often, during the struggles
of the State to establish its independence, been in conflict with it:
sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both having been in the
wrong: all this History explains. Its true position is to be in advance
of the State. It elaborates and diffuses that interpretation of man’s
nature, and position, and of the knowledge man has attained to, those
conceptions of virtue and that morality which the State, following in
the wake of the Church, adopts in its own degree and fashion, and makes
in such degree and fashion the aims and principles of its legislation.
Every virtue, however elementary and indispensable, according to our
ideas, might once have been beyond the power and the ken of the State. We
can imagine such a condition of things, as that, during its continuance
the State would have been unable to enforce and inculcate the principles
of common honesty, and even of responsibility. It may once have been so
here, just as it is still, to this day, in Dahomey. Scientifically, the
condition of Dahomey is as much a part of the subject as the condition
of England. The question is, what has brought about the difference? The
answer is the Church—the Church that was in Egypt, that was in Israel,
that was in Greece, that was in Rome, that was in the forests of Germany,
that has been, and is, amongst ourselves. The Church has, all along, been
going before and shaping, little by little and step by step, higher and
clearer conceptions of right, and of duty, and of life; and the State has
followed, little by little and step by step, accepting and adopting what
the Church had made possible for it. Its position has generally been,
and _ex rerum naturâ_ it must be so, behind the Church. This is seen
distinctly in the early days of Christianity. The Church was then working
out, and diffusing, much that the State afterwards recognized and acted
upon. This is their true relation to each other. It is not merely that
the nation, organized for its immediate mundane wants, is the State, and
that humanity, organized for the needs of its higher life, is the Church;
but that, besides this, in the progress of society and of humanity, each
is indispensable to the other. Universal History tells us this: and from
universal History, in a matter of this kind, there is no appeal. And what
universal History tells us the History, as far as it goes, of the two
famous buildings before us confirms.
And now we must take off our thoughts from the two great organizations
of society, whose action and interaction have all along been at work
in shaping our political, social, and moral growth, and making us what
we are, symbols of which, in the two buildings before us, we have been
looking upon, and must turn our thoughts to the great million-peopled
city itself, of the existence of which we are reminded, at the spot
where we have taken our stand, chiefly by a few lordly mansions, glimpses
of which we catch, here and there, through the trees. What variety of
life is stirring within its widely differing regions! How much energy
and power, and how much waste of power, and neglect of opportunity, are
there! What principles are struggling into existence! What principles
are dying out! What a conflict of principles is going on! We shall think
not only of the lordly mansions environing the parks that are spread out
before us, but equally of the commercial city on the banks of the river,
and of the moiling and toiling, the rough and gin-drinking myriads of the
manufacturing quarters of this world-capital. We shall, in our thoughts,
set by the side of what is refined, and intellectual, and energetic, what
is frivolous and enfeebled, what is rough, and degraded, and vicious. We
shall become sensible of the uncertainties, as well as of the power, of
the great intellectual and moral organism that is at work all around us.
How much is there that is good and hopeful in all classes, and how much
in all that is evil, and evil enough almost to cause despondency! How
vast and complex is the whole! Your thought enables you to understand
that the railway and the telegraph have made the city in which you are
standing the centre of English business and life, in a manner that was
impossible formerly; and more than that, for the ocean steamers and
electric cables have made it the centre of the business of the world.
How does the imagination, when stirred by the suggestions of the scene,
picture to itself the fashion in which are peopled the decks and saloons
of the great steamships that are hurrying, outward and homeward, on
all seas and oceans, to carry out the plans that have been originated
and matured here! You think, too, of the countless messages that are
flashing to and fro, beneath those seas and oceans, every moment, for
the same purpose. Here is the heart of the world. The life-sustaining
blood, in the form of human thought, and which carries along in itself
the elements of construction as well as of life, is ever going forth from
this heart, and coming back to it again. How many tens of thousands of
steam-engines, in as many mines and factories, are throbbing and working
to supply the wants, and maintain the wealth, of this manifold Babylon
we have built. Of this wealth we see an exhibition here every day; for
this is the spot for the daily parade of one of its braveries. How have
the corn-fields and meadows of this island been solicited year by year
to yield more and more, and how widely have Australian and African
wildernesses been peopled with flocks and herds, for the enlargement
of this wealth. This has on its surface only a material aspect. It is
true that its first and most obvious result is to give wealth, and the
enjoyment of wealth; and that neither of these are necessarily and in
themselves good: for if wealth lead only to the self-bounded fruition of
wealth it is deadening, corrupting, and degrading: and of this there is
in the city around you much. But, however, this is not all its effect. It
has given to many minds culture and leisure, which they have devoted to
advancing the intellectual wealth of man; and it has produced many who
have devoted themselves, according to the light that was within them,
and prompted by the noblest impulses of our nature, to the improvement
of the moral condition of those with whom they come in contact. Which of
the two preponderate, the good or the bad effect of the sum of all that
is going on, we need not attempt to estimate here. But to whichever side
the balance may incline at the present moment, we believe that the bad
will perish, as it has done in past times, and that the good only will
survive—for only what is good and true is eternal.
And now we turn from the many who are wealthy to the greater many who are
poor, and are carrying on a painful struggle for bare existence, in this
vast assemblage of humanity: and here, too, we find mingled with what
there is of good much that is evil. Here, as with the wealthy, are aims
that are unwise, springing from misleading instincts which society has,
carelessly and ignorantly, allowed to be formed in its bosom, and which
tend in the individual to unhappiness and degradation, and in society
itself to disorder and subversion.
All this must be taken in by the mind in order that the scene before us
may be rightly understood. We could not interpret the scenes of old Egypt
till we had formed some conception of what old Egypt was, and we must
endeavour to do the same for our corresponding English scene. It is in
this way only that the study and understanding of old Egypt can be of any
use to us. It is only when we understand both that we are in a position
to ask the question whether old Egypt has anything to teach us.
It tells us that the aims of society must be moral; and that the morality
required can, within certain limits, be created and shaped, and made
instinctive, where society itself honestly wishes and intelligently
endeavours to do it. But as we look upon old Egypt we see that the
morality we need is not precisely what they imagined and established, and
that we are precluded from attempting to establish what we want in the
fashion of old Egypt. Theirs was a system of constraint, ours must be
a system of freedom. Theirs was a system that concentrated its highest
advantages on a few, ours must be a system that opens its advantages
to all. We must present what we have to offer in such a form that men
will voluntarily accept it for themselves and for their children, and
allow it to shape them. If we see distinctly what we have to do, and
the conditions under which we have to do it, this will be in itself the
achievement of half our work. Their method was to devise a system, in
strict conformity to the conditions of the problem as it then stood,
and place it as a yoke upon society. They could do that: we cannot. Our
method must be accepted freely by society, and by the individual. We,
too, must devise a system in strict conformity to the conditions of
the problem as it now stands; and it must be such as approves itself
to the understanding and the conscience of the men of these times. The
successful fulfilment of the first requirement will, probably, include
the second.
Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, each did the work that had been allotted
to it. What we have to do is not to repeat what any one of them did.
That, indeed, we could not do; and, if we could, it would be of no use
to us. Imitations at all times, but more particularly when circumstances
differ, are worthless and disorganizing. And yet what each of them did
was necessary for us. The work we have to do now is a great advance upon
theirs, and is to be done under very different conditions from theirs,
but is so connected with theirs that we cannot dispense with their
foundations, or with the principles they worked with. We need them all,
but we must use them in the way our work requires. When men came to build
with stone, they did not abandon all the principles of construction they
had worked out for themselves during the time they had built with wood.
Those principles were right as far as they went. They were not all bad,
and worthless, and inapplicable to the new material and its grander
possibilities. What had to be done was to incorporate the new principles
that were needed with those from among the old that would still be
serviceable. The purpose and object of building, whatever the materials
might be, continued one and the same. And so, now that we have come to
use glass and iron largely in architecture, the same process is again
repeated. Some new principles may be introduced, but we do not discard
all the old ones. Just so is it with the social fabric.
The great and governing differences in our case are that what we have to
do is to be done for all, and that this is accompanied with the condition
of not partial, but universal freedom. It never was so with any of the
old peoples. And though our work is new in some of its conditions, and
such as, in its reach and variety, was never dreamt of by the four great
teacher nations of antiquity, there is no more reason for our failing
in it than there was for their failing in theirs. That it is to be done
is, in some sort, proof that it may be done. Indeed, there is apparently
more reason for our success than there was for theirs. We have their
experience; and in the principles of universal freedom, and universal
justice, we have more to commend what ought to be done now to men’s
hearts and understandings then they had. Freedom, knowledge, truth,
justice, goodness; these must be our aims, our means, our statecraft, our
religion. We do not go off the old tracks. They all converge into our
path. And so we find that we are advancing, having history for guide,
through new conditions, into a richer and better life, placed within the
reach of an ever increasing proportion of the community.
The greatest, perhaps, of the advantages that will be found in our wealth
is that it will enable us to confer on every member of the community
such knowledge and such training as shall have an hopeful, perhaps a
preponderant, tendency towards making instinctive, at all events in the
minds of the greater number, a rational use of the freedom they already
possess, and the love and practice of truth, justice, and goodness.
Though, indeed, when we look at the educational efforts of Saxony, of
Switzerland, and of New England, we are almost brought to fear that
this great and necessary work will be undertaken more readily and
intelligently, and done sooner and better, among people, who have less of
the material means for carrying it out than ourselves. In saying this, I
do not at all mean that we should confine our efforts merely to what they
have done, for they have, to a great extent, omitted that morality which
I consider the main point of all; but that we should be much better than
we are, if we had done as much as they, with their very inferior means,
have already accomplished.
In Egypt submission and order; in Israel, though labouring under most
cruel disadvantage, during its better days belief in and devotion to
right, and during its latter days the determination to maintain at
any cost its morality and religion; at Athens the appreciation of
intellectual culture; in the Roman Empire, by the mere working of its
system, the idea of the supremacy of the law, and the sentiment of the
brotherhood of mankind—were made instinctive. Why should we despair
of doing as much for what we need? Our task, indeed, though so much
grander, and promising so much more fruit than theirs, does not appear
as hard as theirs. If it be beyond our powers, then modern society is
but a fermenting mass of disorder and corruption. It cannot be so,
however; for if it were, then the long course of History would now have
to be reversed. All the progress of the Past, and all its hard-won
achievements, would prove without purpose; and there would remain for us
only to despair of truth, of right, of religion, and of humanity itself.
FOOTNOTES
[1] This was written in 1871. It was in the following year, that is, in
the interval between the first and the second edition of this work, that
the Livingstone-search Commissioner of the ‘New York Herald’ found the
great African explorer.
[2] Some, I am aware, are disposed to answer the question of this Chapter
by ascribing to the Egyptians a Turanian origin. The following appear
to be the steps in the process, by which they endeavour to reach this
conclusion. There was, in remote times, on the banks of the Euphrates, a
Priest Class, which, on the supposition that in its sacred and literary
language, there are some traces of the early Turanian form of speech,
might have had a Turanian origin. (Though, indeed, a Priest Class is
rather an eastern Aryan, or even a Semitic, than a Turanian phenomenon.)
This Priest Class, thus conceivably Turanian, might, conceivably, have
had some ethnological connexion with the Priest Caste of Egypt. (There
is, however, nothing to lead us to suppose that its antiquity was as
great as that of the Priest Caste of Egypt.) Therefore the Egyptians
might have had a Turanian origin. To put the argument abstractedly:
We may imagine two presumable possibilities; the first of which
possesses little probability, and the second still less; and then by the
juxta-position of the two reach a desired conclusion. In other words,
some degree of probability will be the product of the multiplication
of the non-probability of a first assumption by the improbability of a
second. This is the form of argument by which probability is inferred
from the accumulation of improbabilities.
Of course, there is no saying what discoveries the future may have in
store; but, in the present state of knowledge, it seems an unlikely
supposition that Arts, Science, Law, Philosophy and Religion were,
aboriginally, Turanian.
[3] It is a curious fact that the inhabitants of the Lake-villages of
Switzerland cultivated, in the prehistoric period, as may be seen in the
Zurich collection of objects from the sites of these villages, the same
variety of wheat—that which we call Mummy, or hen-and-chickens wheat—as
the old Egyptians. Did the first immigrants into Europe, of whom we may
suppose that we have some historical traces, for the Etruscans may have
been, and the Laps, Finns, and Basques may still be, surviving fragments
of their settlements, bring with them this variety of wheat at the same
time that another swarm from the same Central Asian hive were taking it
with them to the Valley of the Nile.
[4] I am led to propound this conjecture from a desire to render
intelligible what Herodotus says of their hair and skin; for we know,
both from the old paintings and from the existing mummies, that the true
Egyptian’s skin was not black, and that there was no kink in his hair. It
is impossible then to take his statement as it stands; and I can imagine
no other way of correcting it.
The difficulty here I conceive to be of just the reverse kind to that
which meets us in his statement, that the circumference of Lake Mœris
was 450 miles; and which, therefore, in the chapter on the Faioum, I
endeavoured to render intelligible by just the reverse process, that is
to say, by suggesting that, while we suppose he is speaking of the Lake
only, he is really speaking of the whole of a vast system of artificial
irrigation, of which the lake was the main part. Here he is speaking of a
part of the Egyptian population, only he puts what he says in such a way
that we suppose that he is speaking of the whole of it.
I will take the opportunity of this note to propound an explanation of
Homer’s having sent Jupiter, and all the gods, to Oceanus, to feast, for
twelve days, with the irreproachable Ethiopians. We immediately ask, Why
with the Ethiopians? Why are they irreproachable? What have they got to
do with Oceanus? Why to feast? Why for so long a period? Why all the
gods? The light, in which things are viewed in this book enables us to
see an answer to each of these questions.
Homer, we know, was acquainted with the magnificence of Thebes. In
his time, and for many centuries before, the Phœnicians had, through
commercial intercourse, been closely connected with the Greeks;
having, during the whole of that time, been an autonomous dependency,
or dependent ally, of the Egyptians, who, in going to and from their
head-quarters on the Euphrates, had kept open a line of communication
through Phœnicia. The Phœnicians, therefore, must have had a great
deal to tell the Greeks about the marvellous greatness of Egypt, the
chief ingredient in which was the magnificence of Thebes. There was
plenty of time for all this to be thoroughly talked over. Sethos and
Rameses, the great Theban builders, had preceded Homer’s day by four
or five centuries. And, as such things never lose in telling, Homer’s
contemporaries must have had no very inadequate—we now know that they
could hardly have had exaggerated—conceptions of the temples and wealth
of Thebes. He mentions the great amount of its military population; its
hundred gates, which, as no traces of walls of fortification for the city
have been found, meant, probably, the propylons of the temples; and its
vast wealth. He knew probably that Egypt consisted of an Upper and of a
Lower Egypt, and that the inhabitants of the Upper country were darker,
and that in the extreme south, as then understood, the complexion became
quite black; and so, to distinguish them from the maritime Egyptians,
he calls them Ethiopians. He uses the same word as an epithet of dark
objects, as of wine and bronze. And here among these Ethiopians was the
wondrous Thebes. When the Phœnicians had told the inquisitive Greeks
of its mighty temples, and of its incalculable wealth, they must have
described its commerce, the source, to a very considerable extent, of
its greatness. For centuries it had been the emporium of the trade of
India, Arabia, and Africa. This, and its position in the supposed extreme
south, to Homer’s mind, connected it with the outer, world-surrounding
ocean. What was told to him, and to his contemporaries, of the tides and
monsoons of the Indian Ocean, suggested to them, and most aptly, only the
idea of a stream. They heard of tides on the Atlantic also; hence his
mighty stream of circum-ambient ocean. As to the trade of Thebes, all
international wholesale trade in those times, and in that part of the
world, was carried on in the courts and sacred enclosures of temples.
The greatness of the temples was, in some measure, an indication of the
greatness of the trade. The great festivals were, in substance, only
great fairs. Trade was then under the guardianship of Religion. Society
was not yet sufficiently organized for the protection of trade: for such
a purpose the civil power could hardly as yet be said to exist. Religion
alone had either the wisdom, or the power, to enforce fair dealing, or
to ward off violence. At the season, therefore, that the great annual
caravans arrived from the interior, and the easterly monsoons wafted the
merchandise and products of Arabia and India to Egypt, to be bartered
for those of Africa (and the caravans were doubtless so arranged as that
their arrival synchronized with that of the ocean-borne traffic), there
were great processions and feasts at the temples. Religion then put
on its most imposing aspect. We have now only to recall the number of
temples in the sacred enclosure at Thebes (this enclosure itself meant
order and protection), and then we shall have all the materials requisite
for enabling us to understand every particular of Homer’s statement.
Jupiter goes to the Ethiopians, because he was the chief god of Thebes.
But there are temples enough for all the gods, and so they all accompany
him. Here they meet, we see why, Oceanus. It is a great festival of
many days. This is intelligible. We see why these Ethiopians are
irreproachable. In an age of piracy and violence they enforce, with all
the authority of Religion, the order, fair dealing, and abstinence from
all kinds of violence, and ensure the security, necessary for trade; and
which had made the trade they were protecting and fostering the greatest,
at that time, in the world. Their singular irreproachableness might
be measured by their unparalleled prosperity, and their unparalleled
prosperity accounted for by their singular irreproachableness; and both
might be explained by their profound and all-embracing piety. This made
them irreproachable. This made them prosperous. This ensured the presence
of all the gods at their twelve days’ Feast.
[5] Throughout this chapter I distinguish between the idea, and the
doctrine, of a future life. There may be some traces of the idea in
the Old Testament; though I believe that they are not so numerous, or
so distinct, as many suppose. And what there may be of this kind is
certainly counterbalanced by the general tenor of the documents with
respect to this subject, and by some distinct statements in the opposite
sense. What I affirm is, that there is no trace of a doctrine of a future
life. A doctrine on such a subject is a categorical averment of it,
unmistakably announced, and unmistakably used as a motive for shaping
the whole life. Of such an averment, so used, I assert, and endeavour to
account for, the absence.
[6] It has been pointed out to me by a reader of the first edition of
this book, that there is a great similarity between the above paragraph
and a passage in Bishop Butler’s _Analogy_. But as I have not seen that
great work since my Oxford days, now thirty-two years ago, I think I may
be allowed to leave it standing with an acknowledgment of unconscious
reminiscence.
[7] NOTE.—After the foregoing Chapter was in type, it occurred to me to
apply the light of the fact it accounts for to some prominent particulars
of the Old Testament. Here are a few of the results: Moses gives as a
reason for our first parents having been driven out of Paradise, that God
desired to preclude the possibility of their eating of the fruit of a
certain tree, whereof if they were to eat they would become immortal; and
that He afterwards carefully guarded the tree from them by Cherubims, and
a flaming sword that turned every way. This was to prevent their becoming
immortal. Previously, too, God had threatened that, if they disobeyed a
certain commandment, they should become incapable of immortality (for
the context shows that this was the meaning intended); and, on their
disobedience, God had passed on them the sentence that they should return
to the dust out of which they had been made. There can be no reasonable
doubt but that in this part of the introductory history a foundation is
designedly laid for the absence of the doctrine of a future life from the
dispensation; and objections to its absence answered by anticipation.
Popular hermeneutics, however, are incapable of explaining these
particulars, notwithstanding the significant prominency assigned them in
the narrative.
Again, on the theory of the popular interpretation, we can see no reason
why Isaiah should have placed the ultimate suppression of evil, and the
complete triumph of good, on this earth. That would be of no advantage
to the generation to which he had to address himself; and it would be
an arrangement that would give nothing to those who had borne the heat
and burden of the day, and everything to those who had done nothing.
The difficulty, however, vanishes, when we remember that he had no
doctrine of a future life, or of any other stage than this earth for man.
Everything, therefore, that was to be brought about, must be brought
about on this earth, and during this earthly life, which were all.
Our fact also accounts for the conspicuous, and otherwise inexplicable,
want of proselytizing zeal in the old Israelites. They quite believed
that the best thing for man was the knowledge of God; but they had no
disposition to communicate this knowledge. The reason was that the
advantages of this knowledge were temporal. Had, therefore, Jehovah been
brought to give protection, wealth, and strength to their neighbours,
with whom they were generally in a state of hostility, it would have been
a hurt to themselves. So soon as the objects of religion became moral
only, and not of this world, Israelites had abundance of zeal for making
proselytes among their neighbours.
Doubtless other particulars will occur to the reader, which, like those
I have just noted, are explicable only by the aid of the direct opposite
to that which the popular interpretation assumes, this direct opposite
being, in fact, the most prominent and distinctive of the peculiarities
of the dispensation.
[8] Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.—_Acts_ vii. 22.
[9] In ‘Land and Water,’ of February 3rd, 1872, may be found an
interesting account of the way in which D. (Lord Ducic) stalked, killed,
and ultimately secured the sunken carcass of one of the few stragglers
that may now occasionally be seen to the north of the cataract. It was
a full-grown specimen, and, as the evidence of its stomach proved, a
child-eater. _Jure occisus est._ The scene was 3° 32´ north of the
cataract.
[10] M. de Lesseps has lately raised these charges 50 per cent., having
made the discovery that the chargeable tonnage of a steamship includes
the space required for engines and fuel. As well might he, after having
charged a sailing vessel for its cargo-space, assess at so much more
the scantling of its spars, and the spread of its canvas. At all events
this method of charging is not after the fashion in which he himself
originally interpreted those terms of the concession, which fix the rate
at which ships using the Canal may be charged.
INDEX.
Abraham, his genealogy, 29.
At the Pyramids, 83.
At Heliopolis, 119.
Bargaining with Ephron, 337
Abydos, 97-104.
Ride to, 98.
Its Palace and Temple, 100;
its Tablet, 101.
Antiquity of its civilisation, 102-104
Acacia, 411
Achmed and Hodge, 396-401
Agriculture, Egyptian, favoured early civilization, 13-15.
Syrian, 245
Alexandria, 448-457
Alkali, Egyptians used, in washing, 367
Amasis, 277
Amenemha III., his register of risings of the Nile, 5, 114.
Engineered Lake Mœris, 114
American, an, on the Pyramids, 85.
The ⸺ pig, 433
Amunoph, 124.
His Colossus, 150
Apries, or Pharaoh Hophra, 277
Arabs sleep in the open air, 99.
Truthfulness and honesty of, 176.
Superstitions, 359-364
Arch, date of the, in Egypt, 142.
Why not used, 294.
Date of the pointed, 464
Art, style of Egyptian, 36
Arts, antiquity of useful, 44
Aryan ancestors of Egyptians might have come from the Persian Gulf,
38.
Date, 40.
Their belief in a future state, 35, 195
Ashdod, siege of, 275
Ass, the, 424
Assassef, 151
Assyrian Dynasty at Bubastis, 271.
They overrun Egypt, 272
Assouan, Governor of, 168.
Camel-riding at, 421
Astronomer Royal for Scotland on the Pyramids, 63, 65
Awe, its place in religion of Egypt, 127
Backsheesh, 45-51
Bahr Jusuf, 103, 106, 475
Bargaining, 337, 469
Basques, possible origin of, 40, 44
‘Beginning’ of 1st Ch. of Genesis, 264
Belief, travel and, 244-256
Belzoni, 138
Benihassan, 173
Bethany, girl of, 47-49
Bethlehem, women of, 50
Birds in Egypt, 436-440
Birket el Keiroon, 106, 111, 112
Bitter Lakes, 486
Bottled-up labour, Capital is, 59
Boulak Museum, wooden statue in, 72-74.
Chephren’s statue in, 74
Brotherhood, doctrine of, 318.
Overthrew Egyptianism, 320.
Its subsequent history, 322
Bubastis, 270.
Festival of, 278.
Canal of, 473, 475
Buffalo, the, 433
Builders, Orientals great, 467
Buildings, cause of disappearance of, 77.
Destruction of, in Egypt, 79.
In the Delta, 266-289.
Preservation of, in Upper Egypt, 290-298.
Why large, and constructed of large stones, 293
Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ 190
Cairo, 458-471
Caliphs, tombs of the, 467
Camel, 417-423
Canalization of the Isthmus, 472-493
Capital, what ⸺ is, and how it acts, 59.
What it will do for the East, 394
Caste, origin of, 34.
How used by the Egyptians, 311.
Survey of the phenomena of, 332-336
Christianity has no written law, 211, 213, 215, 217, 220, 229, 233,
318.
Why ⸺ triumphed in Egypt, 320.
Why ⸺ failed, 321.
Was a protest, 509.
What it dealt with, 516
Chronology, early, 75, 81
Church and State, 514.
Its relation to religion, 515.
Its conflicts with the State, 516.
Originally included the State, 517.
Its usurpations stopped, 519.
Who look to the, for the education of the people, 525.
Its inability to educate, 526.
Its sphere, 528.
What it should teach, 532
Civilization, early hindrances to, 13.
What it was before the date of the Pyramids, 52-56.
Anterior to Abydos, 102
Cleanliness, Oriental, 365-369
Cleopatra, 164, 286.
Needle of, 455
Climates, Egypt has the ⸺ of two zones, 15
Clothes pawned returned at sunset, 340
Colchis, Egyptian colony at, 160
Colossus of Memnon, 150
Communications easy in Egypt, 13.
In direction of latitude, 14
Conclusion, 494-540
Concrete, early thought, 259
Constantinople, 492
Contemporaneous, Egyptian documents, 94, 101
Copts at Thebes, 148
Cosmogony, Mosaic, how to be taken, 261
Crabs, their business, 145
Criticism, Biblical, 82, 257
Crocodiles, why worshipped, 109.
The last killed below the Cataract, 435
Custom, persistency of, 337.
Change of, an European characteristic, 340
Darius completes the Canal to the Red Sea, 477
‘Day’ of the 1st Ch. of Genesis, 263
Dead, Book of the, 186
Deceased, the, 103
Della, its dynasties, 266-284.
Overthrow and disappearance of its monuments, 266-289
Dendera, 286
Despotism, how nature aided, in Egypt, 18-20.
How formerly checked, 21
Dish, dipping in the, 340
Divorce, 378, 383
Doctrine differs from idea, 193
Dodecarchs, connexion of, with Labyrinth, 115
Dog, the, 428
Dôm Palm, 413
Donkey-boys, 170-176
East, can anything be done for the? 389-395
Edfou, 285
Education, the, which the State should undertake, 524
Egypt, how formed, 1-9.
Its agriculture made civilization possible, 13.
Has two climates, 15.
Its configuration and agriculture aided despotism, 12-20.
What hope for modern, 21.
Antiquity of its civilization, 26.
Its relation to Israel, 239.
Its prosperity under Amasis, 277.
What its history teaches, 536
Egyptians, how their character affected by nature, 12-20.
Hard lot of modern, 22-24.
Not mainly African, or Semitic, 27.
Mixed Aryan and Ethiopian, 32.
Their style of art, 36.
Aptitude for science and organization, 37.
Might have arrived by the Red Sea, 38.
Not Turanian, 41.
Resembled the Japanese, 42-44.
Their belief in a future life, 182-192.
Their wisdom and its fall, 299-322
England, how want of wood in Egypt affects, 408.
Advantage of the Canal to, 491
English thought practical, 120-123.
Language in Egypt, 171
Equus, why not Latin for horse, 263
Esbekeyeh, 464
Esné, 287
Established Churches, 214
Ethiopians, connexion with Egypt, 33.
Why irreproachable, 162 (note)
Etruscans, possible origin of, 40, 44
Evil eye, 360-363
Exclusiveness, national, 312.
Abrogation of, 318
Exodus, date of, 474
Faioum, 105-116.
Remoteness of its reclamation, 105.
How reclaimed, 106-112.
Why crocodiles were worshipped in, 109
Fellah, his hard case, 22
Festivals, at Bubastis, 278.
At Sais, 279
Finns, possible origin of, 40, 44
Free trade and independence, 43
French policy in Egypt, 480
Fuel, how manufactured in Egypt, 407
Future life, Egyptian belief in, 35.
Whence derived, 182.
Basis of Egyptian civilization, 184.
Why not a doctrine of the Mosaic Dispensation, 193-243.
Why necessary for Christianity, 211-220.
Why Moses could not have taught it, 221.
Logical basis of the doctrine, 238.
Buddhist doctrine of, 240.
Jewish morality unsupported by, 240, 500
Gardening in Egypt, 414-416
Genesis, 1st Ch. of, 261-265
Geese, ancient and modern, 438
Germanicus at Thebes, 164-167, 502
Girl of Bethany, 47-49.
At Thebes, 172.
At Benihassan, 173
Goats, 434
Gods, materials from which ⸺ were made, 290
Granite, why used, 267
Greece compared with Egypt, 501.
What it achieved, 539
Greeks keep pigs in the East, 431, 432
Hareem, the atmosphere of the, 387
Harrow, my young friend late from, 47, 51, 87, 91
Harvests, Egypt has two, 15
Hebrew Scriptures not primarily historical, 81-84.
Their chronology, 81.
Why ⸺ have no doctrine of a future life, 193-243.
How to be interpreted, 257.
Right of interpretation, 259
Heliopolis, 117-123.
The Holy Family at, 117.
The University of Egypt, 119.
Obelisk of, 119
Herodotus upon the formation of Egypt, 3.
Mentions a register of risings of the Nile, 5.
His account of Lake Mœris explained, 110.
Of Egyptian colony in Colchis, 160.
What he says of Bubastis, 270.
Of the Egypt of Amasis, 277.
Of Necho’s circumnavigation, 274.
Of feasts of Bubastis and Sais, 278
Herod’s temple and palace, 246
Hippopotamus, 435
Hodge compared with Achmed, 396-401
Homer acquainted with the greatness of Thebes, 124.
Why ⸺ sends the gods to the irreproachable Ethiopians, 160-162.
Mentions the Island of Pharos, 453
Homœopathy, 364
Hophra, or Apries, 276
Horse, the, in Egypt, 426
Houriism, 381-388
Ideas make men and women, 385.
Change slowly, 519
Imagination, its relation to history and religion, 461
Immortality, how the working of society confirmed the idea of, 17.
How the river and the sun, 18.
How Christ brought it to light, 211-234.
Why mankind not immortal, 243 (note)
Insects in Egypt, 443
Instincts, moral sentiments are, 306.
What are ⸺, 308.
Egyptian study of, 310
Interpretation, historical method of, 257-265
Isaiah, why ⸺ anticipated a new earth, 243 (note)
Iseum, 280
Ismailia, 483
Israel compared with Egypt, 499.
What it achieved, 539
Israelites, who they were, 29.
Their ethnology, 199.
Not unimaginative, 204.
Their moral heroism, 241.
When ⸺ built Pithom and Ramses, 474
Jacob’s deception, 250
Japan, Egypt compared to, 42-44
Jerusalem, aspect of the city, 246.
Only a Bible word, 256.
Pilgrims at, 357.
Camels at, 419
Jesus Christ, the situation to which His teaching was addressed, 207.
What He taught, 210-220.
Argumentative position of, 216, 229.
Why He taught a future life, 229.
Why He impugned the doctrine of immediate judgments, 239.
His doctrine, in part, a protest, 509
Jews, a mixed people, 29, 199.
Moral heroism of, 241.
Why not proselytisers, 243 (note)
Jezebel’s last toilet, 338
Joseph, story of, 338
Josiah defeated by Necho, 276
Kagabu, 339
Karnak, 125-132.
Hypostyle hall of, 129
Kêf, 95
Koran, 345
Labour, why squandered on Pyramids and Temples, 57-63
Labourer, English, why held to labour all the year round, 399
Labyrinth, 114-116
Lamps, Feast of, 279
Landlordism Eg., 328-331
Language, morality compared to, 242
Laps, possible origin of, 40, 44
Law, Semitic idea of, 31.
Separation of Municipal from Religion, 212-216.
General laws the same as particular Providence, 235
Legislatures, Orientals have no, 347, 371
Letters, discovery of, 184.
Results, 185, 391
Liberty, Oriental systems extinguish, 372
Library of Rameses, 146.
Of Alexandria, 455
Light, Symbol of the Divine Spirit, 280
Literature, effects of, 390-392.
Alexandrian, 451
Livingstone, 2
London, a contemplation of, 506, 534
Luncheon at the Pyramids, 92-96
Luxor, 124
Luxury, Oriental, 383
Mad, are all Orientals, 341
Mandeville, his account of the Pyramids, 64-66
Marriages, Oriental, 338, 374.
Why early in the East, 378
Master-mind, the, 122
Medinet Haboo, 148
Memnon, 150
Mendes, 266
Metaphysical solutions of physical problems, 3
Metaphysics, Hebrew, 261.
Early, 232
Mississippi compared with the Amazon, 15
Modern societies, prospects of, 540
Mœris, Lake, 108.
Abundance of fish, 110.
Herodotus’ account of, 110
Mohamed, 66, 342
Mohamed Adamanhoury, 470
Money not known at date of the Pyramids, 58
Monogamists, early Egyptians were, 37.
Nature made us, 379
Monuments, why disappeared in the Delta, 266-289.
Why not in Upper Egypt, 285-289.
Rationale of, 290-298
Moral being is a growth, 253.
Moral sentiments instincts, 306-310.
Aims of society must be, 536
Morality not dependent on future life, 240.
How congenital, 242.
Grounds of, 242.
Progressive, 251.
What should be taught by the State, 524.
What by the Church, 532
Moses, his wife, 168.
Aim of his legislation, 201.
First historical protestant, 509
Mosks of Omar, 246.
Of Cairo, 464.
Of Ebn e’ Tooloon, 464.
Of Hassam, 465.
Of El Azar, 466
Mosquitoes, 443
Mounds of old cities, 404
Mouské, 461
Municipal religion when impossible, 227
Nature, how ⸺ affected the Egyptians, 12-20.
What it presented to the Egyptians, 16.
Variety of, 495.
Intelligence seen in, 496
Necho, extends the Canal to the Bitter Lakes, 273.
Circumnavigates Africa, 274.
His Asiatic campaign, 275.
Extends the Canal of Rameses, 477.
Necropolis of Pyramid era, 91-95.
Of Thebes, 133-143
Nile, how the, formed Egypt, 1-9.
Three colours of its water, 9.
Contrast of past and present value of its work, 10.
Facilities for up and down traffic, 14.
Important that it flows in the direction of latitude, 14
Norfolk Island Pine, 415
Obelisk of Heliopolis, 119.
Of Luxor, 125.
Of Alexandria, 281, 455.
Were books, 298
Omar destroys the library of Alexandria, 456.
Re-opens canal to Red Sea, 479
Orientals, are they mad? 341.
Intellectual inferiority of, accounted for, 343
Originality of the Egyptians, 153
Osiris, temple of, at Abydos, 101.
Mysteries of his sufferings, 271
Ositarsen, first name at Karnak, 130.
At Tanis, 267
Ox, the, 434
Palace of Westminster, what it suggests, 512, 514
Palm-trees, tax on, 23.
Character of, 110
Paradise, Hebrew, 205.
Mahomedan, 381
Parliament, history of the English, 513
Paul, St., what he taught, 220
Pearls, real, 121
Pelicans, 437
Persian invasion, 163
Petamenap, his tomb, 141
Pharos, 453
Philæ, Great Pyramid looks down on, 70.
Ride to, 421
Physical Geography, bearing of, on national history, 12
Pigeons in Egypt, 437
Pilgrimage, 355-358
Pilgrims, Greek and Latin, at Jerusalem, 357
Pithom, 473
Platte, resemblance of valley of, to Egypt, 4
Pointed Arch, 464
Polygamy, 374-380.
The polygamic region, 376
Population, Commerce supports, 245
Pork, why forbidden in the East, 433
Port Saïd, 482
Post-Pharaohnic temples, 285-289
Prayer, Oriental, what it is, 349.
Connexion of, with morality, 351.
Variation in its object, 352.
Repetitions in, 354.
Women not taught, 374
Printing-press, its use to the East, 392
Progress, in arts, 137.
In religion, 231.
In moral being, 253.
Historical progress, 325.
Ordained by God, 233.
Rendered possible by letters, 184, 392
Property, value of security for, 389.
Exists amongst animals, 429
Prophets, the Hebrew, have no doctrine of a future life, 194.
Anti-Egyptian policy of, 276.
Their hopefulness, 315.
Their self-devotion, 500
Protestant, the first, 509
Providence, identity of particular, and general laws, 235
Psalm, the 109th, 250
Psammetichus, 272
Ptolemy Philadelphus re-opens the canal to the Red Sea, 478
Pyramids, contemporary civilization implied by, 52-56.
Why labour was squandered on, 57-63.
Why so formed, 63-69.
Sir J. Mandeville’s account of, 64-67.
Inscriptions on the Great, 65.
Great Pyramid higher than the Cataract of Philæ, 70.
Ascent of Great Pyramid, 85-91.
Luncheon at, 92-96.
Necropolis of Pyramid era, 94-95
Railway, a mid-European, 492
Rameseum, 146
Rameses II. at Luxor and Karnak, 125.
His temple-palace, 145, 146.
His library, 146.
His great expedition, 154-163.
His inscription in Syria, 162.
Cut the Pithom-Ramses Canal, 473
Rameses III., his tomb, 135.
His temple-palace, 148
Ramses, city of, 473
Rationale of the monuments, 290-298
Register of Nile risings, 5, 114
Religion, Aryan character of that of Egypt, 27, 35.
Aim of that delivered by Moses, 201.
A municipal, when impossible, 227.
A chapter in its history, 231.
Same as truth, 237.
Its great _rôle_ in Egypt, 299.
Why it did not spread, 302.
Its aims moral, 303.
Why it fell, 320.
Reverts in Egypt to Theocracy, 321.
An organism of thought, 341.
A distinction between Christianity and Mahomedanism, 342.
What it is, 515.
Its aims, 532
Republicans, why Orientals are not, 370-373.
Conditions disposing them to be, 370
Ritualists, where those, get their ideas, 465
Rome compared with Egypt, 502.
What it achieved, 539
Rooks, 439
Sais, its temple, 271.
Connexion with the Greeks, 271.
Festival of, 279
Sakia, 446
Sandstone-buildings long-lived, 289
Saul’s sons hanged, 250
Scarabs, 177-181
Scene, the, in England, 495.
Must be associated with man, 496.
In Egypt, 498.
The chief ⸺ in England, 506
Science, Egyptian aptitude for, 37
Scotchman’s opinion of Heliopolis, 120
Sebennytus, 280
Secession of military caste, 273
Semites, their monotheistic tendency, 30.
Their view of law, 31.
Not unimaginative, 204
Semnéh, Nile registration at, 5
Serpent-charming, 340
Sesortosis not first dresser of stone, 72-81
Sethos, his hypostyle hall, 129.
His tomb, 134, 138.
His temple-palace, 147
Shadoof, 445
Sheep, 434
Shoes taken off in holy places, 338
Shops, Eastern, 263
Silsiléh, Cataract once at, 7
Slavery, its abolition not contemplated by the first Christians, 234
Sluices of Lake Mœris, 108.
At Suez, 477, 478
Solanum, a handsome one, 416
Solomon’s Pools and Aqueduct, 50.
Has no doctrine of a future life, 194
Sparrows, 437
State, relation of, to Church, 513.
Stops the usurpations of the Church, 519.
Does not see its own duty, 520.
Neglected national education, 521.
What it should teach, 523.
Why it should enforce moral training, 528.
The sphere of the, 528.
Its ability to give moral training, 529
Statue, wooden, at Boulak Museum, 72-74.
Of Chephren, 74
Stone, date of building with, 75-81.
Why large stones used in building, 293
Street, the Royal, at Thebes, 151
Suez, 477, 478, 484
Superstitions, Arab, 359-364.
The evil eye accounted for, 360-363
Sycamore, 117
Tablet of Abydos, 101
Tacitus’ account of Germanicus’ visit to Egypt, 165
Tamarisk, 412
Tanis, 267.
Hyksos at, 269.
Connexion with the Exodus, 269
Tax on palm-trees, 23
Temples fortresses, 286
Testament, relation of New to Old, 235
Thebes becomes the capital, 125.
Sources of its wealth, 130.
Necropolis of, 133-143.
Its temple-palaces, 144-153.
Grandeur, 151
Theology and religion, 67.
Not religion, 321.
Of Alexandria, 451
This. _See_ Abydos
Tombs, pictures and sculptures of, 134-142.
Why larger in Egypt than elsewhere, 296.
Of the Memlooks, 467
Transmigration of souls, 188
Travel, effects of Eastern, on belief, 244-256.
An aid to understanding the Scriptures, 249.
Affects different minds differently, 253
Trees in Egypt, 410-413
Truth identical with religion, 237
Turanians, Egyptians not, 41
Turtle, how treated, 441
Unclean, the, animal, 431
Unconformable stratification of Nile mud, 9
Upper Egypt in post-Pharaohnic times, 289
Veil, the, 338
Venice, 492
Vertebrate skeleton, belief in a future life the ⸺ of thought, 183
Vespasian’s excise on scouring, 367
View from citadel of Cairo, 460.
In London, 506
Villages, wretched houses in the, 405
Wagtail, 436
Wall-space for records, 290-298
Warburton’s Divine legation, 238
Water-jars, 402-404
Wells, suggestion for, in Egypt, 459
Westminster Abbey, what it suggests, 508, 511.
What palace of, suggests, 512, 514
Wheat, mummy, cultivated by early settlers in central Europe, 44
Wife, an unfaithful, drowned, 384
Wisdom of Egyptians, 299-321.
In what it consisted, 306.
What overthrew it, 320
Women, Oriental, why frail, 386.
Water-carriers, 402
Wood, want of, in Egypt, 405-409
Woollen, why Egyptian priests did not use, 367
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