“O Egypt, Egypt, there shall remain of thy religion but vague stories which posterity will refuse to believe, and words graven in stone recounting thy piety. The Scythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous neighbour shall dwell in Egypt. The Divinity shall reascend into the heaven. And Egypt shall be a desert, widowed of men and gods.”[b]
FOOTNOTES
[10] [Herodotus tells the story somewhat differently.]
CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS
If I wished to characterise in one word the peculiar bearing and ruling element of the Egyptian mind—however unsatisfactory in other respects such general designations may be—I should say that the intellectual eminence of that people was in its scientific profundity—in an understanding that penetrated or sought to penetrate by magic into all the depths and mysteries of nature, even into their most hidden abyss. So thoroughly scientific was the whole leaning and character of the Egyptian mind, that even the architecture of this people had an astronomical import, even far more than that of the other nations of early antiquity. I have already had occasion to speak of the deep and mysterious signification of their treatment of the dead. In all the natural sciences, in mathematics, astronomy, and even in medicine, they were the masters of the Greeks; and even the profoundest thinkers among the latter, the Pythagoreans, and afterwards the great Plato himself, derived from them the first elements of their doctrines, or, caught at least the first outline of their mighty speculations. Here, too, in the birthplace of hieroglyphics, was the chief seat of the mysteries; and Egypt has at all times been the native country of many true, as well as of many false, secrets.—Schlegel.
Customs that differ from our own always seem strange customs. So the Egyptians, viewed from a latter-day European or American standpoint, seem a very strange people. And it being easy to generalise from insufficient data, many notions regarding the Egyptians have become current which appear not to represent that people as they really were. The more the monuments are studied, and the closer we get to the real life of the peoples of antiquity, the less strange these peoples appear.