The monuments also teach us that hunting was not neglected by the Egyptians. Hares, foxes, antelopes, gazelles, hyænas, buffaloes, and lions were driven into inclosures surrounded by nets, or chased with the bow and arrow and dogs, or with the chariot and hounds. Gazelles and buffaloes were also taken with the lasso; traps were set for the hyænas; the hippopotamus was attacked with a spear from a boat.[298]
Of the industry of the Egyptians in trade we have already had striking evidence in the monuments of the old kingdom. There we saw all kinds of manufactures in the various stages; we found on them the simple weaver's loom, which produced the robes of byssus, so highly valued in antiquity,—the lasting fabric which may still be examined in the clothing of mummies. The early development of technical skill meets us more especially in the pictures of the preparation of glass on the tombs at Beni Hassan. Glass cups and vessels are frequently found in the tombs, and Strabo observes that the earth required for making glass is among the products of Egypt.[299] The working of the copper mines in the mountains of Sinai goes considerably further back than the date of the tombs at Beni Hassan. They were open as early as the times of Snefru and Chufu.[300] Yet by far the greatest proportion of hands must have been employed upon the buildings of the kings and the tombs of the wealthy. On the monuments we see the masons in all their various occupations; painters and statuaries also are represented there in the different moments of their work; and the tables of proportion which they followed are still preserved.
Even before the invasion of the Hyksos, as we saw from the tombs at Beni Hassan, the life of the wealthy Egyptian was surrounded by considerable elegance ([p. 118]). The houses of the rich, built, according to the pictures on the monuments, in a light and graceful style, in contrast to the heavy structure of the temples, had several stories, and were provided with the galleries and terraces still usual in the East. Houses in the country had shady avenues of trees, planted in exact rows, and neat beds of flowers, graceful pavilions, and fountains of water. The common national dress was a linen shirt, and over it a woollen cloak; the labourer and the lowest class had only an apron round the body; but the clothing of the higher classes was choice and delicate. The women, who enjoyed considerable freedom in Egypt, wore various ornaments—necklaces, eardrops, and bracelets; rings of the most various shape adorned almost every finger. Their hair was carefully dressed; they bathed frequently, and made a considerable use of ointments. Life was sociable in ancient Egypt. In the tombs at Beni Hassan we find men carried in a palanquin to a social meeting; and in the tombs at Thebes they are driving in chariots to a similar gathering. Gaily-dressed men and women meet and converse with each other in the hall; slaves, light-coloured and black, in part handsomely-dressed, hand them garlands and cups. The table is spread. Bread, figs, and grapes are set out in baskets, wine in glass bottles; vegetables and poultry are also there. The solid food was eaten with the hand, liquids were taken with spoons. At these banquets the Egyptians do not seem to have been very moderate. Herodotus tells us that a small wooden image of a mummy was carried round at their entertainments, with the exhortation, "Look on this, drink and be merry. When dead, thou wilt be as this is!"[301] This admonition was not without its results. In the pictures on monuments we find not only men, but women, throwing up the surfeit of food and wine; others are carried away home by their servants. Indeed, excess and drunkenness are quoted among the forty-two chief sins of the Egyptians. During the meal dancers were introduced, and bands of musicians, male and female, who played on harps, guitars, and flutes; among which was mingled the sound of the tambourine. A chorus also sang to the harp. The company also played and danced.[302] We have already seen that games of ball and mora were played under the old monarchy. Among the recreations of the new monarchy draughts are found. We often find on the monuments sketches of men and women who exhibit contortions of their bodies and feats of strength. Sham-fights at sea also occur, and wrestling matches are very common.
Proudly as the Egyptians, in the consciousness of their purity and culture, looked down on "the unclean and perverse" nations outside their land, and rarely as they travelled into other countries, Egypt was nevertheless the centre of a considerable trade. China and Japan also for a long time shut themselves up from the outer world, yet their trade was considerable, though permitted only at certain fixed places. The Egyptians also caused the products which they needed to be brought, without themselves going to seek them. Egypt required wood for the building of houses and ships, brass, ivory, slaves, and incense. Even before the year 1500 B.C., Arabian caravans carried the products of the south coast of Arabia to Syria and Egypt.[303] The wandering tribes of Libya, Syria, and Arabia required corn, weapons, utensils, and implements, which they could buy in Egypt. Then at a later period came the trade of the Phenicians with Egypt. They could bring wood from the forests of Lebanon—wine, oil, slaves, amber, and tin, and exchange them for the manufactures of Egypt; for retail goods, glass, drugs, which Egypt produced in great quantities, fish, Egyptian fabrics, linen, and material prepared from the papyrus. The Greeks called fabrics made from this plant, "byblian," from the city Byblus, a proof that they first became acquainted with these Egyptian wares through the Phenicians, and mainly through the ships of Byblus, and received them from this quarter. Horses, also, and chariots were brought as articles of trade from Egypt to Syria about the year 1000 B.C.; at that time a chariot cost in Egypt 600 shekels, and a horse 150.[304] So far as we can gather from the legends of the Greeks, the trading ships could only enter the Canopic mouth of the Nile, and intercourse with foreign merchants could only take place on the little island of Pharos, opposite the city of Thonis. Here the mariners of that day, the Phenicians, and with them, and after them, the Ionians, carried on their trade with the Egyptians. On land the only entrance was by Pelusium; and here as also at Pharos, an entrance-tax had apparently to be paid. From the Homeric poems we may conclude that there was then a trade with Egypt, and not only piratical descents upon the coasts; but when the Ionians, about the middle of the eighth century, began to enter into dangerous competition with the Phenicians, the latter seem to have succeeded in getting the Greeks excluded from Egypt, and obtaining for themselves the monopoly of the sea—a privilege which, however, they did not maintain for more than a century.[305]
Such was ancient Egypt, the land of marvel, whose richly developed civilization lies on the threshold of historical life. Excellently furnished by nature, and placed in a peculiarly favoured land, the Copts have transferred to their own lives and civilization the grave and solemn character of their sky and their country. Their conservative feeling is directed towards fixed and unalterable order; the sons repeat the lives of their fathers, and the nation is divided into various classes and corporations, which carry on the same occupations from generation to generation. The beneficent powers of nature, the mystery of life, the life returning out of death—these are the forces and laws which the Egyptians worshipped as their good gods, whose creation is the fruitful world, who manifest themselves in good creatures, whose unchangeable nature they seemed to recognise as embodied in the instinctive and unalterable life of certain animals. The life of the nation adapts itself also to priestly rules, which operate without alteration, like the laws of nature.
As the heart of this people was set upon the continuance of the race and occupation, on rule and law, so also was it their desire to prolong the existence of the individual. This impulse towards the preservation of self operated so strongly that the Egyptians busied themselves with the future quite as much as with the past. It was this trait in their character which caused the Egyptians to rescue their dead from corruption, and occupied the living with the construction of "eternal dwellings for the dead." This it was which made them a nation of scribes, builders, painters and sculptors. These efforts culminate in the buildings of the kings, who could command the whole powers of the land in preserving their names. The Egyptians were loath to end with death. It was the true vocation of every man worthily to build and "adorn his tomb;" and the essential object of life is—not to lose the everlasting life after death by unclean and unlawful conversation—to win a return to the divine origin of life.
With the simple confidence of childhood, with the patient endurance of a man, and with iron perseverance, the Egyptians attempted to redeem the existence of man from destruction and decay, and rescue his life from oblivion. The power of the Egyptians exhausted itself in this toil after continuance of life. But however eager a man might be to preserve his own individuality, he loses it in the presence of his ruler, who gathers up in his own person the whole political life of the nation, and exhausts it. Like a god, or an incarnate Destiny, the Pharaoh stands in absolute supremacy over the land; "His countenance beams over Egypt as the sun;" before him all distinctions fade away, and all bow down in equal obedience. But even though the perishable was preserved, and made as lasting as the rocks of the land—though in the ceremonial, the ritual, and the rules of life the same unalterable constancy prevailed as in the laws of nature, there was still room beside fixed prescription and the will of the divine ruler for the vigorous pursuit of an industry which was not far behind that of modern Europe, for an enjoyment of life in the Oriental manner, which was not only social, but even luxurious and sensual.
The efforts of the Egyptians to preserve themselves and their actions, and to cause their names to live in the mouths of the generations after them, have not been without a result. What the Greeks and Romans knew of their history were traditions attached to the great monuments. Before our researches the Egyptian nation has literally risen from the tomb; the pyramids tell us the history of the old monarchy, and the temples at Thebes the history of the new. Without these monuments the kings of Manetho would have remained an empty and unintelligible echo. These mountains of stone at the threshold of history, these chronicles of hieroglyphics, this nation of mummies proclaim, beyond contradiction, that nations do succeed in outliving themselves by their works, but also that their life reaches only so far as their development.
FOOTNOTES:
[252] Diod. 1, 90.