Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

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.