Once more, after the fall of the Assyrian empire, the political situation changes in Egypt’s favour, and Psamthek I and his successors won back wealth and power for her. But the aged nation had no longer the skill to take wise advantage of propitious fortune; it had no thoughts of its own, nor could it find fitting form for its new splendour. The Egyptians rested content with imitating in whimsical fashion, in all things, the Old Kingdom, the earliest period of their national glory, and the contemporaries of Neku and Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] took pleasure in feigning themselves the subjects of Cheops, in bearing the titles of his court, and writing in a language and orthography which had been in use two thousand years before. Learned antiquarianism is the distinguishing feature of this latest Egyptian development.
The end of the sixth century brought fresh calamities upon the land. Cambyses conquered it, and it became a Persian province. And although, after many a vain attempt at revolt, it shook off the foreign yoke for awhile, about 400 B.C., yet in a few decades it again fell into the hands of the Persians. Since those days Egypt has never had a ruler of her own blood; she has been the hapless spoil of any who chose to take her.
Alexander the Great was the first to whom the country fell, and at his death it became the heritage of his general, Ptolemy. In his family it was handed down, to become at length a province of the Roman Empire in the year 30 B.C. Throughout its length and breadth there is but one spot that thrives during this period, the new port of Alexandria, founded by the great king in the barren west of the Delta; this becomes a metropolis of the Greek world, and its merchants and manufacturers extend their trade by land and sea to every quarter. But this same Alexandria was ever something of an alien in Egypt, and the rest of the country took no part in the busy life that ran its round there; it grew corn and flax and wine and supplied them to the Roman world, it throve, but less for its own profit than that of the empire. Greek culture made its way but slowly there, and even in the great cities of the interior the Greek language and the Greek religion were never strong enough to displace the native idiom and the old faith. They influenced it by degrees, much as the European culture of to-day influences the ancient civilisation of the far East, but even as the Chinese remain Chinese in spite of railroads and the telegraph, so the Egyptians of the Græco-Roman period clung tenaciously to their own ways. They held fast all points of the national customs they only half understood; above all, they held to their ancient faith. And yet by that time the religion of Egypt was as degenerate and debased as it could possibly be. As is apt to be the case with antiquated beliefs, its mere singularities had flourished at the expense of its wholesome side; cats, snakes, and crocodiles had now become the most sacred of beings in the eyes of the vulgar, and every kind of superstition was rampant. The depositaries of this religion were the members of a stereotyped hierarchy that had long lost touch with the outer world; they worshipped their gods according to the old tradition, used the ample wealth of the temples to build them new shrines in the old style, and enjoyed their fat benefices under the benevolent protection of the foreign government.
Thus the Egypt of this later day had long been empty of all vital force; it continued to exist, but only because the aged nation had lost the power of adapting itself to the new world. And yet this decrepit Egyptian character, with its dead religion, cast a singular spell over the sated spirit of the Roman world. The worship of Isis and Serapis spread far and wide; everywhere Egyptian sorcerers found a willing public for their superstitions. Roman tourists visited the ancient land, gazed in amazement at its wonders, while at home the nobles built themselves villas in the Egyptian style and adorned them with statues from Memphis. Even the most highly educated looked upon Egypt as a holy land, where everything was full of mystery and marvel, and piety and the true worship of the gods had their dwelling place from of old. And even after the fashionable predilection for things Egyptian had passed away, this notion of the mysterious and sacred land of Egypt remained fixed in men’s minds, and was handed on from generation to generation. Whenever ancient Egypt is mentioned in later days it suggests ideas of mystery, symbolism, and esoteric wisdom. And so anything to which it is desired to lend an air of mystery claims derivation preferably from Egypt, the secret lodges of the eighteenth century no less than the spiritualists and quacks of our own day. Ancient Egypt has acquired this reputation, and though, now that we know it better, we perceive that it is but little in accordance with her true character, all our researches will not be able to dispel the illusion of two thousand years. In the future, as in the past, the feeling with which the multitude regards the remains of Egyptian antiquity will be one of awestruck reverence. Nevertheless, another feeling would be more appropriate, a feeling of grateful acknowledgment and veneration, such as one of a later generation might feel for the ancestor who had founded his family and endowed it with a large part of its wealth. For though we are seldom able to say with certainty of any one thing in our possession that it is a legacy we have inherited from the Egyptians, yet no one who seriously turns his attention to such subjects can now doubt that a great part of our heritage comes from them. In all the implements which are about us nowadays, in every art and craft which we practise now, a large and important element has descended to us from the Egyptians. And it is no less certain that we owe to them many ideas and opinions of which we can no longer trace the origin, and which have long come to seem to us the natural property of our own minds.
This legacy of ideas, no less than of technical dexterity and artistic form, which the Egyptians have bequeathed to us, constitutes the service they have done to the human race. They cannot vie with the Greeks in intellectual gifts, and they never possessed the force that determines the course of history; but they were able to develop their capabilities earlier than other nations, and thus secured for the world the substantial groundwork of civilisation.
Thirty centuries have passed since ancient Egypt accomplished this, her real mission for the world; since then she has hardly done more than till her soil in its service. Silently her existence has flowed on, and all the catastrophes which have befallen her since Roman times have not been able to stir her to fresh vigour. Christianity spread in Egypt early, but the philosophic labours accomplished there in connection with it are the work of the educated Hellenistic classes, not of the Egyptians proper. What these last added to Christianity, the anchoretic and monastic life, cannot be counted among its advantages. And when, in the fifth century, the Egyptians broke away from the Catholic Church, the barbarian element to which the nation succumbed thenceforward finally triumphed. The tie that had bound the Egyptians to European civilisation was severed, and the Arab conquest had only to set the seal to this divorce.
This same Arab conquest, which, in the course of centuries, went so far as to rob the ancient nation of its ancient language, and imposed a new faith upon the great majority of its inhabitants, was powerless to inspire it with new life. Outwardly Egypt has become Arab, but the Egyptians had but a very small share in the intellectual life of the Arab Middle Ages, a share probably not much larger than that which they had taken in Alexandrian culture.
Once again, in our own days, the opportunity of rousing itself afresh is offered to the Egyptian nation. It is once more linked with Europe, and its prosperity has advanced with astounding rapidity. From all sides new influences stream in upon the ancient people, and we would fain indulge in the hope that now at length it might awake to new life. But, unhappily, this hope has but little prospect of fulfilment, and all things will but run again the course they ran long ago in Græco-Roman days. The foreigner will prosper in Egypt and invest it with a tinge of his own civilisation, the work of European civilisation will inspire an Egyptian here and there with a profound sympathy. But the nation itself will remain untouched, it will rise up no more, it has lived itself out and its intellectual capabilities are exhausted. In time to come, the Egyptian nation will probably do no more for the human race than diligently provide it with cotton and onions, as it does to-day.
