A New Year's Reception
"After an hour's most exciting ride, we dismounted at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. Here is a mummy coffin, whose hieroglyphics demonstrate that the ancient Egyptians had a conception of hell and heaven, and a belief in the immortality of the soul. There is an inscription proving that the Sphinx existed before the time of Cheops; and that even then, the people were rich and civilized. Here are ancient knives, scissors, needles, etc., but nothing is made of iron, which they thought a bone of their evil genius. Here on exhibition are the magnificent jewels found on the mummy of Queen Aoh-Hotep, the mother of the first king of the XVIII. dynasty.
"Here can be found the confirmation of many narratives of the Old Testament. The first great event in the Kingdom of Judah, after its separation, was the invasion of Shishak, king of Egypt. According to the sacred record, Shishak came against Jerusalem with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen, took the fenced cities, and was about to invest the capital, when Rehoboam made his submission.
"On the outside of the great temple at Karnak, hieroglyphics commemorate the success of Shishak against Judah, and records a long list of captured towns—the fenced cities of Scripture. The picture Moses gives of a Pharaoh ruling over an absolute monarchy, finds confirmation in the ancient Egyptian tombs. From vast numbers of papyri, we learn in detail of that old civilization—records which even Herodotus was not able to read.
"In these we find a counterpart of the picture of that country presented by Moses. After a slumber of 3,000 years, these records present the people prostrating themselves, the laborers storing away grain, the baker with his three baskets upon his head, the brickyards with Jewish laborers supervised by Egyptian taskmasters, etc.
"In the Museum of Antiquities are statues of kings and queens who lived in the era between Moses and Abraham. In front of them is an immense glass case in which is deposited their crown jewels, artistically executed. Among them is a massive gold chain, more exquisitely beautiful than anything I saw in the Tower, among Victoria's crown jewels, unless I except the Kohinoor. It was more beautiful than the jeweled swordhilt, breast plate or crown of the Shah of Persia, worn at his reception at Milan, though they represented nearly half the wealth of his kingdom.
"Thus it is proved that in the era in which Joseph received the chain of gold from Pharaoh, such chains, of rare workmanship, were already in vogue. Less than a century ago, critics were hurling their shafts of contempt against the so-called blunders of Moses; but monumental history substantiates his credibility. Truly, Egypt is one of God's historic books. His handwriting is on temple and tablet and tomb. Here dead men speak, and stones rise up to testify. Bricks of unburnt clay, torn up from the ruins of centuries, tell of Israel's bondage and labor.