It is not needful, however, to continue to point out the many ways in which archæology may be shown to be necessary to happiness. The reader will have comprehended the trend of the argument, and, if he be in sympathy with it, he will not be unwilling to develop the theme for himself. Only one point, therefore, need here be taken up. It has been reserved to the end of this chapter, for, by its nature, it closes all arguments. I refer to Death.
Death, as we watch it around us, is the black menace of the heavens which darkens every man's day; Death, coming to our neighbour, puts a period to our merry-making; Death, seen close beside us, calls a halt in our march of pleasure. But let those who would wrest her victory from the grave turn to a study of the Past, where all is dead yet still lives, and they will find that the horror of life's cessation is materially lessened. To those who are familiar with the course of history, Death seems, to some extent, but the happy solution of the dilemma of life. So many men have welcomed its coming that one begins to feel that it cannot be so very terrible. Of the death of a certain Pharaoh an ancient Egyptian wrote: "He goes to heaven like the hawks, and his feathers are like those of the geese; he rushes at heaven like a crane, he kisses heaven like the falcon, he leaps to heaven like the locust"; and we who read these words can feel that to rush eagerly at heaven like the crane would be a mighty fine ending of the pother. Archæology, and especially Egyptology, in this respect is a bulwark to those who find the faith of their fathers wavering; for, after much study, the triumphant assertion which is so often found in Egyptian tombs—"Thou dost not come dead to thy sepulchre, thou comest living"—begins to take hold of the imagination. Death has been the parent of so much goodness, dying men have cut such a dash, that one looks at it with an awakening interest. Even if the sense of the misfortune of death is uppermost in an archæologist's mind, he may find not a little comfort in having before him the example of so many good, men, who, in their hour, have faced that great calamity with squared shoulders.
"When Death comes," says a certain sage of ancient Egypt, "it seizes the babe that is on the breast of its mother as well as he that has become an old man. When thy messenger comes to carry thee away, be thou found by him ready." Why, here is our chance; here is the opportunity for that flourish which modesty, throughout our life, has forbidden to us! John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, when the time came for him to lay his head upon the block, bade the executioner smite it off with three strokes as a courtesy to the Holy Trinity. King Charles the Second, as he lay upon his death-bed, apologised to those who stood around him for "being an unconscionable time adying." The story is familiar of Napoleon's aide-de-camp, who, when he had been asked whether he were wounded, replied, "Not wounded: killed," and thereupon expired. The Past is full of such incidents; and so inspiring are they that Death comes to be regarded as a most stirring adventure. The archæologist, too, better than any other, knows the vastness of the dead men's majority; and if, like the ancients, he believes in the Elysian fields, where no death is and decay is unknown, he alone will realise the excellent nature of the company into which he will there be introduced.
There is, however, far more living going on in the world than dying; and there is more happiness (thanks be!) than sorrow. Thus the archæologist has a great deal more of pleasure than of pain to give to us for our enrichment. The reader will here enter an objection. He will say: "This may be true of archæology in general, but in the case of Egyptology, with which we are here mostly concerned, he surely has to deal with a sad and solemn people." The answer will be found in the next chapter. No nation in the world's history has been so gay, so light-hearted as the ancient Egyptians; and Egyptology furnishes, perhaps, the most convincing proof that archæology is, or should be, a merry science, very necessary to the gaiety of the world. I defy a man suffering from his liver to understand the old Egyptians; I defy a man who does not appreciate the pleasure of life to make anything of them. Egyptian archæology presents a pageant of such brilliancy that the archæologist is often carried along by it as in a dream, down the valley and over the hills, till, Past blending with Present, and Present with Future, he finds himself led to a kind of Island of the Blest, where death is forgotten and only the joy of life, and life's good deeds, still remain; where pleasure-domes, and all the ancient "miracles of rare device," rise into the air from above the flowers; and where the damsel with the dulcimer beside the running stream sings to him of Mount Abora and of the old heroes of the elder days. If the Egyptologist or the archæologist could revive within him one-hundredth part of the elusive romance, the delicate gaiety, the subtle humour, the intangible tenderness, the unspeakable goodness, of much that is to be found in his province, one would have to cry, like Coleridge—
| "Beware, beware! | |
| Weave a circle round him thrice, | |
| And close your eyes with holy dread, | |
| For he on honey-dew hath fed, | |
| And drunk the milk of Paradise." | |