This temple stood on a little island called Philae, not far from the first great waterfall of the Nile. Ever since men could remember, the spot had been dedicated to the worship of Isis and for some curious reason, the Goddess had survived where all her African and Greek and Roman rivals had miserably perished. Until finally, in the sixth century, the island was the only spot where the old and most holy art of picture writing was still understood and where a small number of priests continued to practice a trade which had been forgotten in every other part of the land of Cheops.
And now, by order of an illiterate farmhand, known as His Imperial Majesty, the temple and the adjoining school were declared state property, the statues and images were sent to the museum of Constantinople and the priests and the writing-masters were thrown into jail. And when the last of them had died from hunger and neglect, the age-old trade of making hieroglyphics had become a lost art.
All this was a great pity.
If Justinian (a plague upon his head!) had been a little less thorough and had saved just a few of those old picture experts in a sort of literary Noah’s Ark, he would have made the task of the historian a great deal easier. For while (owing to the genius of Champollion) we can once more spell out the strange Egyptian words, it remains exceedingly difficult for us to understand the inner meaning of their message to posterity.
And the same holds true for all other nations of the ancient world.
What did those strangely bearded Babylonians, who left us whole brickyards full of religious tracts, have in mind when they exclaimed piously, “Who shall ever be able to understand the counsel of the Gods in Heaven?” How did they feel towards those divine spirits which they invoked so continually, whose laws they endeavored to interpret, whose commands they engraved upon the granite shafts of their most holy city? Why were they at once the most tolerant of men, encouraging their priests to study the high heavens, and to explore the land and the sea, and at the same time the most cruel of executioners, inflicting hideous punishments upon those of their neighbors who had committed some breach of divine etiquette which today would pass unnoticed?
Until recently we did not know.
We sent expeditions to Nineveh, we dug holes in the sand of Sinai and deciphered miles of cuneiform tablets. And everywhere in Mesopotamia and Egypt we did our best to find the key that should unlock the front door of this mysterious store-house of wisdom.
And then, suddenly and almost by accident, we discovered that the back door had been wide open all the time and that we could enter the premises at will.
But that convenient little gate was not situated in the neighborhood of Akkad or Memphis.