[EGYPTIAN HISTORY.]
BY EUGENE LAWRENCE.
Egypt is the most interesting of countries, because it is probably the oldest. We borrow from it nearly all our arts and sciences, and have only improved upon what the Egyptians taught us. Our alphabet and the art of writing came from the banks of the Nile. It was carried to Phœnicia, then to Greece and Rome, and then to Europe and America. The Egyptians invented the lever, by which all engines are moved, and electricity and steam made useful. Egyptian glass-makers, goldsmiths, painters, weavers, builders and stone-cutters, miners, gardeners, and even poets and historians, have taught their arts to all the Western nations; Moses studied in the Egyptian colleges, and Joseph and his father looked upon its Pyramids and temples with wonder.
The land of Egypt is a deposit of mud brought down by the floods of the Nile from the mountains of Middle Africa. Every year the river overflows its banks, and renews the fertility of the soil by a new deposit, and these regular inundations have been so provided for by embankments and canals as to be seldom dangerous. The Nile scarcely ever sweeps away the flocks and harvests of the farmers, like the Mississippi. It would be well if the Mississippi could be made as useful as the Nile.
This flat land of mud rests on rocks and sand. On each side of it is a desert, bare, hot, and stifling. A desert divides it from Asia. It is isolated from the world, and here for several thousand years the Egyptian Pharaohs ruled over an obedient people, and their people invented and practiced those useful arts which they were afterward to teach to others. The first King of Egypt is supposed to have been Menes; he reigned about 3000 b.c. Thirty-one dynasties or families of Kings follow Menes, and the Egyptian kingdom had lasted more than two thousand five hundred years when it was conquered by Alexander the Great. The Assyrians, Persians, and even the Ethiopians had conquered it before, but had been driven out by the rising of the people. For two thousand years the Egyptians were free and united. The oldest modern kingdom counts scarcely eight hundred years, and our own government nearly one hundred.
The Egyptians were a dark-colored race, and came probably from Asia. They lived alone upon the banks of the Nile, shut out from the world. All Europe was then a wilderness filled with wild beasts and a few savage men. All was waste and desolate. The savage people who surrounded Egypt were like our American Indians, ignorant and treacherous. Had they been able they would have broken in upon the industrious Egyptians, sacked and burned their cities, and robbed them of all they possessed. They would have destroyed temples and palaces, houses and gardens, ships and factories, and left us without any of the Egyptian inventions and improvements. But fortunately the deserts and the sea for two thousand years at least kept the savages away. The country grew rich and flourishing; the banks of the Nile were lined with fine farms as fertile as those of Kansas or Dakota. The wheat was full and white. The gardens of Egypt produced beans, onions, cabbages, and were filled with flowers. Countless towns and cities sprang up along the Nile. Some of them were as large, perhaps, as Chicago or New York. The rich land swarmed with people. The families of the Egyptians lived in comfortable houses; the children were usually taught in the temples to read and write; all were taught to work; they were well dressed and very neat; and when Joseph governed the land with discretion and good sense, there was no part of the Western world that could equal the intelligence and civilization of Egypt. Its cities, temples, palaces, farms, and gardens were the wonder of the ancient historians.
To-day Egypt is an impoverished country, distracted by civil war. Alexandria, once one of the most magnificent cities of the world, lies in ashes, and the people throughout the land are suffering all the horrors of famine amidst their plundered and ruined homes. Long ages of mis-rule and ignorance have brought the fruitful and prosperous land to this terrible condition. In the days of Joseph the armies of Egypt might have withstood the world. Now the conqueror is at her gates, disorder rages within, and peace and prosperity can return to her borders only under the protection of a foreign power.