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.