Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

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.