A sense of rest and tranquillity pervades the mind.
“Straight in his ears the gushing of the wave
Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave.”
Even the conscience slumbers. But the prosaic traveller hurries through all with unseeing eyes. Like the tourist who visited Cologne and was too sleepy to get up and look at the Cathedral, he gapes at the Pyramids, viewing them perhaps as “warts on the face of creation,” and sees no glory in the heavens, no beauty in the earth, the story of the ages has no charm for him.
Long before “Once upon a time,” if such a period can be conceived of, the great monuments were raised, the colossal temples were built, which have been the wonder of all succeeding centuries, and yet still back of and beyond that, stretching away to the confines of Eternity, we picture to ourselves the land as it then was, without these marvels of Art, when Nature ruled supreme. Then as now the plains stretched out, the yellow cliffs rose against the azure sky, the desert spread afar, the purple cloud of the simoom hovered over it. The sun sank in splendor of violet, rose and gold, the torn and ragged sides of the mountains poured down their torrents of shining sand, the fissures burning with a crimson lustre. The splendor passed and ashy paleness followed; then a second paler but intense yellow hue, ere the stars shone out. And ever the Nile calm and unruffled swept on with its eternal flow, while the air breathed balm. Sometimes the waters gained, sometimes the sand. The byblos or papyrus, now almost extinct, abounded; along the waters edge forests and reeds, later destroyed, were plentiful, and wild bear, hippopotami and crocodiles whose ancient haunts know them no more, roved freely. The lakes abounded with fish, pelicans and ducks lived on the shores, and turtle doves brooded on the palm trees. The language of Egypt has been changed once, the religion twice, but the natural conditions remain steadfast.
Before Menes, the first king of whom any distinct record has yet been recovered, man, civilized man, possessed the earth. In tracing the course of Egyptian history we never, as with many other nations, seem to reach primeval humanity. Like Minerva, springing ready armed from the brain of Jupiter, the earliest Egyptian known is in a measure civilized. The wild savage, who develops into the more perfect man, exists in theory, but we cannot lay our hand upon him. Some authorities, as Professor Petrie, attribute the beginning of Egyptian civilization, as the Greeks found it, to Mesopotamian influences, and think the conquering race came over the Red Sea and the conquered were of the same general type as the Libyans of North Africa. But none of these stories have yet been proved beyond the possibility of differing opinion by other students. Strabo said “The Egyptians lived from the first under a regular form of government, they were a people of civilized manners and settled a well-known country.”
Claiming to be the most ancient of peoples the old story tells how the Egyptians yet yielded their pretensions to the Phrygians. The king caused a shepherd to bring up two children, nursed by a goat, and to observe what word they first spoke. Running towards him they cried “Beccos,” the Phrygian for bread, which decided the question, but the wise mother goat perhaps considered they were but imitating her “ba-a!”
The early Egyptian believed that Osiris and Isis, brother and sister, as also husband and wife, were the children of Seb (Saturn), and Nepthys was the sister of Isis. The two were called “the incubators,” who spread their wings over the mummy to impart new life, Isis, represented as a female figure, wearing on her head the pshent or crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, was the earth, the receptive one, was regarded as the mother of all and held somewhat the position to the Egyptians that Juno did to the Greeks. The Egyptians also believed that the heavens were upheld by four pillars and that the stars were lamps lighted therein at night. Osiris and Isis stood for the Nile and Egypt, and Osiris was the sun’s power, the winter solstice, the birth of Horus the summer solstice, the inundations of the Nile the autumnal Equinox. His gods and goddesses were innumerable, their images existing for him in the shape of various animals and birds, and, among royalties, the ancestors were deified.
We of to-day thrust from us the thought of death, and live as much as may be in the present. Not so the Egyptian, it pervaded his daily life and it shared in his feasts and festivals. It rang in his laughter, “Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die!” and his favorite occupation was the building of his tomb.
No other nation possesses such a variety of monuments, says one writer. Their stone quarries were inexhaustible, their facilities for transportation on the great river unlimited, and the sand and the climate combined to preserve what the hand of man erected. Kings pressed their signets on the mountains that the generations to come might know of them and their power.