CHAPTER XXVII.
ANCIENT EGYPT.
We have been moving among the oldest monuments reared by man, and they make the rest of the world seem young. In Japan a Buddhist temple, built twelve hundred years ago, impressed us with the youthfulness of American institutions; in China we were shown temples that had stood for twenty centuries and were told of customs and laws even older; in India we found a pagoda some twenty-five hundred years old, and visited the site of a city whose foundations were probably laid more than three thousand years ago; but here we see the mummied forms of human beings who lived two thousand years before Christ was born, inspect the handiwork of men who laid down the chisel before Abraham appeared upon the earth, look upon colors that have withstood the changes and defied the elements of forty centuries, and handle wheat that grew upon the banks of the Nile long before Joseph built granaries for Pharaoh. The guides count centuries as trippingly on the tongue as a treasury expert or an insurance magnate handles millions. They discuss dynasties that rose and fell when Europe was shrouded in darkness, before the light of history dawned upon the Ganges and the Yangtse; they decipher hieroglyphics that kept their secrets for ages and lead one among ruins that astonish by their immensity as well as by the artistic skill which they reveal.
Back in the misty past—in the prehistoric period—there were two Egyptian kingdoms, one occupying upper, and the other lower Egypt. This was prior to 2,500 B. C., and from the stirring scenes engraved upon stone, one can imagine the conflicts which took place along the fertile valley of the Nile before Menes, the earliest known ruler, united the two kingdoms, assumed the title, Lord of Both Lands, fashioned a double crown for himself, and adopted the lily, or lotus, and the papyrus as symbols of his consolidated empire. We are probably indebted to certain natural peculiarities of Egypt for the preservation of the unique evidences of ancient civilization found here. First, there is but a small area of tillable land stretched along the most wonderful of rivers and guarded on either side by a barren waste that offers greater protection than a wall. Second, the climate of Egypt is dry, and there are no drenching rains to deface and no violent changes of temperature to disintegrate. Third, the temples and tombs are so massively built as to discourage the vandal; and fourth, the sands of the desert have drifted in and concealed for a hundred generations many of the most valuable of these relics of a bygone age.
There is such a wealth of archæological treasures here that one scarcely knows where to begin or how to condense the most important things into the space allotted to a newspaper article. I shall not attempt to describe things chronologically, because some of the temples have been added to by different kings and dynasties, until they represent the art and life of many hundred years. The temple at Karnak, for instance, bears the impress of Egypt's rulers from Thutmosis to the Rameses, and from the Rameses to the Ptolemies, a period of some twelve hundred years, and the building of the numerous pyramids covered even a longer time.
KARNAK TEMPLE.
As the tourist usually begins a trip through Egypt with a visit to Cairo, he is likely to find the great Egyptian museum, the Museum of Gizeh, a fitting introduction to his subsequent investigations. Here one finds samples of all the antiquities of the country, excepting the pyramids and the temples, and there are mummies, sarcophagi, statues, carvings and hieroglyphics from these. A considerable space is devoted to mummies, some from the tombs of kings, but many of more humble rank. The early Egyptians believed that man was composed of several different entities. First, there was the body, and second, the double—a sort of invisible form reproducing the features of the body. Next came the soul, represented as a human-headed bird and then a spark of the divine fire called Khu, which has been translated as "the Luminous." It was to prevent the departure of these attending forms that embalming was resorted to. By suspending the decomposition of the body, they thought that they could preserve the connection between it and the Double, the Soul and the Luminous, and by prayers and offerings these could be saved from the second death. This is the explanation of the mummy given by archæologists. The Double, it was supposed, never left the place where the mummy rested, and the Soul, while it went away to commune with the gods, returned from time to time, and for this reason rooms were made for the reception of the Soul and for the habitation of the Double. One can hardly believe as he looks upon the shriveled forms that they were interred so long ago. I will enclose with this article a photograph of the mummy of Egypt's great builder, and known as "the Pharaoh of the Oppression," who died more than three thousand years ago. The hand no longer sways the scepter; the eyes look no more upon the gigantic statues which he scattered along the Nile, and the voice does not now demand the making of "bricks without straw," but the mortal remains of this famous ruler vividly recall the days of Israel's bondage.