to make brick, hew stone, and handle the workman’s hammer; to build, to cultivate the ground, and, in spite of any hereditary repugnance which might exist, to suffer themselves to be initiated into the arts and manufactures of ancient Egypt.
That which at first was only submitted to under coercion soon grew into the habits, tastes, and customs of the Israelites. They had entered upon a new phase of their existence, thence to issue, after a period of four hundred years, transformed into a people ripe for a constitution, laws, government, and national worship. A man alone was wanting to them, and this man God provided. When Moses arose amongst them, they were familiar with all the secrets of Egyptian art and manufacture. But it was not only by the formation of skilful craftsmen that the influence of this mighty nation made itself felt. It penetrated the whole of their daily life; and this indelible impression was not effaced when Israel had traversed a career of well-nigh twenty centuries. After the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish people, it still attracted the attention of historians and thoughtful men.
It did not even occur to those not well acquainted with the customs of the Hebrews and of ancient Egypt, such as Tacitus, to separate the names of the two peoples, which were included by them in one and the same judgment, meriting in their eyes the same reproaches and together sharing the scanty praise which their new masters allowed at times to fall from their disdainful lips.
But there were others, more attentive and better informed, who
entered more deeply into the study and comparison of the two races—to name only Tertullian, Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. Eusebius had been attracted by the problem, as is proved by the few almost parenthetical lines in his great work, The Preparation of the Gospel, where he says: “During their sojourn in Egypt the Israelites adopted so completely the habits and customs of the Egyptians that there was no longer any apparent difference in the manner of life of the two peoples.”[50]
Nearer to our own time the learned Kircher devoted long years to searching out those points of resemblance which could not at that time be studied by the light of original documents. The severest censors would be disarmed by the telling, though somewhat barbaric, form in which he has presented the true relationship existing between the Mosaic and Egyptian constitutions: “Hebræi tantam habent ad ritus, sacrificia, cæremonias, sacrasque disciplinas Ægyptiorum affinitatem, ut vel Ægyptios hebraïzantes, vel Hebræos ægyptizantes fuisse, mihi plane persuadeam.”[51]
Kircher is right. These men of Asiatic race, born at Memphis, Tanis, or Ramses, were practically Egyptians, and had forgotten their ancient habits, their pastoral life, and the land where the ashes of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were awaiting them. They had grown up and lived amongst a people whose tongue they had learned,[52] whose toils they shared, and whose
gods they worshipped.[53] The children of Jacob could only be distinguished by the aquiline nose and slight beard from the brickmakers and masons of the country, as we see them frequently represented in the monuments of this epoch.
Moses, who was to become their lawgiver, was a learned and accomplished Egyptian in everything but the fact of race. Early separated from his family and countrymen, he had grown up at the court of Pharao, among the near attendants and favorites of the king, and was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”[54] He had beheld the statues of the gods borne in the long processions, and had entered the now silent temples of Memphis; he had looked upon the arks whereon were portrayed the divine symbols, hidden under the guarding wings of mysterious genii;[55] and he had been present when the king, who was also sovereign pontiff, removed on solemn occasions the seals of clay from this sombre abode where, veiled in mystery, dwelt the name and the glory of God.
Into this inner sanctuary, the Egyptian Holy of Holies, the pontiff alone entered, but Moses could behold him from afar, when he burnt the incense before the veiled ark, where, concealing itself from mortal sight, dwelt the invisible majesty of Ra, “Creator and lord of the world.”