Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

Egypt emerges from those dark ages, ruled by powerful feudal lords, with the pharaohs appearing to be mere figure-heads. These great barons left voluminous records, which depict their conquests and their powers, and tell of their own individual greatness. They constructed magnificent tombs for their eternal rest, and the land blossomed culturally under their dominion.

These conditions prevailed until the coming of the Hyksos dynasty. These conquering kings were of Semitic origin and they seem to have come from the region of Ur. After this conquest, Egypt suddenly became an unlimited monarchy. The great lords became landless, stripped of their power and robbed of all authority. The people literally passed into the possession of the crown, and Egypt became a nation of slaves who owed their very existence to the royal head of the government. The reason for this change will be made manifest later in this present work. We are now interested only in presenting these strange cycles of culture as shown by archeology.

It would take many volumes to give a detailed picture of the early golden age in Egypt. As an illustration of the art and development of that culture, we refer the reader to the tomb of a court official at the dawn of the sixth dynasty. Buried with this minor official were certain small wooden effigies depicting customs, trades, and tools of his day. There were porters laden with their heavy burdens. There were scribes bearing stylus and plaque. Certain tradesmen were found in these brilliant statuettes, each man’s craft being shown by the tools that he carried in his hand. Priests appeared clad in their pontifical robes. Perhaps the most interesting of all were the statuettes of candy vendors, each man equipped with his tray of sweets, and a horsehair tail wherewith to fan the flies. Some of these statues were so perfect in their execution that the eminent Phidias might well have envied their perfection. When we compare this art and culture with the so-called pictures of brutish cave-dwellers, we have one more failure in the collapsing chain of evidences that was supposed to show man’s constantly advancing culture.

We might also give, by way of illustration, the magnificent statue of Kephren. This memorial was exquisitely carved from stone so hard that it would blunt most modern tools. Kephren constructed one of the pyramids at Giza. This latter work was notable in that there were evidences that some of the stones had been cut with what appeared to be tubular drills. Since this is possible in our modern culture with the use of diamond-pointed instruments, there is food for considerable thought and speculation as to the culture and learning of Kephren’s age! As a general statement, it is not too much to say that the farther back we go into Egyptian antiquity, the more perfect the arts and culture in general seem to be.

When we compare, for instance, the brilliant workmanship of the priceless pectoral of the daughter of Usertesen (or Usertsen) with the crude and amateurish workmanship of the jewelry of the later queen Abhotep, it is evident that the centuries brought retrogression. The reign of Usertesen may be correlated with the early period of the patriarchal age, which fact has an important bearing upon our study. The hopeful critics of the Book of Genesis have postulated for the age of Abraham a barbaric lack of culture comparable to the nomadic tribes of Arabia in the Middle Ages. We now see, however, that the entire age of the patriarchs was a period of exquisite culture and high learning. To refer again to Usertsen, he seems to have been a capable strategist, and his system of working out his plan of battle was something like the game of chess. His artists had made for him models of the various kinds of soldiers that made up his variegated corps. The bowmen were armed with exquisite miniature weapons that had, to our delight and wonder, been preserved against all the passing centuries. The black troops that he used, of whatever origin, were carved from a wood like our ebony, and the tiny features were negroid in faithful representation of the difference between the races of men employed in his army. These model soldiers could be moved about a board which depicted the terrain of battle, and his strategy thus wrought out. Our present point, however, is the artistic perfection of the models of the soldiers that he used. The art of his age was as nearly perfect as one could wish.

Then there came another cycle of retrogression and decay which climaxed in a period of cultural darkness that reigned too long over that ancient people. It is highly significant, for instance, that the best glass of Egypt is dug from the more ancient sites. There came a time when the art of making glass was forgotten by the people of Egypt and had later to be rediscovered by other races.

If there is one voice that can be heard in archeology, and one lesson that can be specifically learned, it is the certainty of the fallacy of the theory of evolution. Egypt, as elsewhere, shows us no dim, brutish beginning, but a startling emergence of this people in a high degree of culture. No gradual ascent up the ladder of learning, but cycles of retrogression and advancement, followed by decay: then a new dawning of art and science. The entire record of archeology is thus a complete vindication of the premise and basic contention of the inspired record of God’s Word. No greater voice may be heard in our day than this definite, adamant cry from Egypt, which depicts cycles of culture that begin with a crest of learning. It must not be presumed that this condition is unique in Egypt, or peculiar to any one race or country. The same queer discrepancy between the fallacious theories of the philosophy of organic evolution and the facts of human history is observed wherever archeology has been able to hold the torch of discovery over a given area.

We have illustrated, for instance, in Plates Number [6] and [7], one of the most interesting of the exhibits in the British Museum. This is a stone weapon from the archaic ages of the Chaldeans. It consists of a mace head, made of limestone. Incidentally, this was a very common type of weapon among those people in their warlike culture. The particular one that is illustrated is typical of its time. Note that it is a STONE AGE WEAPON.

A note of wonder is caused in our inquiring minds by the odd and utterly incompatible fact that it is engraved clearly in high relief, thus testifying to the fact that in the archaic stone age of Babylon, men who wrought in a time when the evolutionary advocates demand a dim and brutish stage of development were already gifted in the art of sculpture!

To complicate the case still further, they were possessed as well with a highly developed written language! Their stone implements are in some instances crude, as they did not spend time polishing and decorating rude tools that were used for a base purpose. Others of their artifacts, like this stone mace head, are not only covered with finely sculptured figures but are also inscribed with written characters that are clear and well executed. A “stone age” with a written culture, scholars, and books, is an anomaly, indeed!