Kings were more than kings to the common people of Egypt. They were looked upon as gods, the possessors of divine power. They were called the sons of Ra, and Ra often figures in their titles. From being called the son of Ra, the ruler in the eyes of the people acquired the mythical power of the god himself, and was worshipped by his subjects, who shielded their faces from the glory which the monarch spread around him.
The Egyptians have worshipped many gods in many ages. Gods have risen, grown powerful, and been superseded, but always the kings have shared the powers of the various gods, and the people looked upon the king as the living image of the god they worshipped.
Their religions, after the lapse of ages, seem very strange to peoples in other lands. Yet they had much to commend them, and many of the teachings of the Christian religion were anticipated in the religions of the ancient Egyptians.
We look upon the Nile dwellers as pagans, but we cannot deny the logic of the religion which taught them to worship the sun and the Nile, on which they depended for light and life.
CHAPTER V
Gradually the romance of ancient Egypt is being revealed by the graves of those who died in remote times, yet to read the romance at first hand requires exceptional ability that is possessed by only a few men. Little bits of evidence of no importance to the casual onlooker are fraught with immense importance to the scientific seeker.
The most wonderful tombs in the world are to be found in Egypt in the shape of the Pyramids, and as the centuries recede the tombs gradually become simpler until they arrive back at the simplest of all—just a shallow hole scooped out of the ground, in which the dead man rests on a skin.
Consequently the graves of Egypt reveal the rise of Egypt’s civilizations; they indicate how man’s ideas have changed, how primitive customs have slowly passed away and given rise to the most remarkable practices connected with the dead of which we have any trace. The later stone tombs needed no seeking; they were plain to every traveller who journeyed up the Nile. Earlier tombs built of brick were found, revealing a more ancient state of civilization, when men were ignorant of the ways of working stone, or found it too difficult to devote their energies to shaping stone to be built into a tomb. Going back and back, the brick tombs get smaller and smaller, until they disappear, and only the grave remains in which the dead lie doubled up. These were the things that years of work taught, but the earliest graves of all long eluded the eyes of modern workers.
One day Professor Flinders Petrie came across remains. The greatest care was exercised in digging, so that every shred of evidence could be collected, and as the sand and soil were drawn aside he saw it was a very ancient grave, older than anything ever dreamed of in connection with Egypt. No one had any idea that Egypt was inhabited so long ago, but here was proof that men lived in the Nile valley in the dark ages of Time.
The evidence goes to show that a crude civilization existed there ten thousand years ago, and that men may have lived in the Nile valley over twenty thousand years ago. Whether any relics will ever be found to throw any light on this epoch of Egyptian history remains to be seen, but it would not be astonishing if something did eventually appear, for the country has powers of preservation which even to-day are only faintly recognized, and the earth can hide things so cunningly that human beings may search for centuries and never find them again. The fact that they are not found is no proof that they never existed.