The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson

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СКАЧАТЬ has gone to his rest, Ended his task and his race; Thus men are aye passing away, And youths are aye taking their place. As Ra rises up every morn, And Turn every evening doth set, So women conceive and bring forth, And men without ceasing beget. Each soul in its turn draweth breath— Each man born of woman sees Death.

      Take thy pleasure to-day,

       Father! Holy One! See,

       Spices and fragrant oils,

       Father, we bring to thee.

       On thy sister's bosom and arms

       Wreaths of lotus we place;

       On thy sister, dear to thy heart,

       Aye sitting before thy face.

       Sound the song; let music be played

       And let cares behind thee be laid.

      Take thy pleasure to-day;

       Mind thee of joy and delight!

       Soon life's pilgrimage ends,

       And we pass to Silence and Night.

       Patriarch perfect and pure,

       Nefer-hotep, blessed one! Thou

       Didst finish thy course upon earth,

       And art with the blessed ones now.

       Men pass to the Silent Shore,

       And their place doth know them no more.

      They are as they never had been,

       Since the sun went forth upon high;

       They sit on the banks of the stream

       That floweth in stillness by.

       Thy soul is among them; thou

       Dost drink of the sacred tide,

       Having the wish of thy heart—

       At peace ever since thou hast died.

       Give bread to the man who is poor,

       And thy name shall be blest evermore.

      * * * * *

      Take thy pleasure to-day,

       Nefer-hotep, blessed and pure.

       What availed thee thy other buildings?

       Of thy tomb alone thou art sure.

       On the earth thou hast nought beside,

       Nought of thee else is remaining;

       And when thou wentest below,

       Thy last sip of life thou wert draining.

       Even they who have millions to spend,

       Find that life comes at last to an end.

      Let all, then, think of the day

       Of departure without returning—

       'Twill then be well to have lived,

       All sin and injustice spurning.

       For he who has loved the right,

       In the hour that none can flee,

       Enters upon the delight

       Of a glad eternity.

       Give freely from out thy store,

       And thou shalt be blest evermore.

On the other hand, there is evidence of a lightsome, joyous, and even frolic spirit as pervading numbers, especially among the lower classes of the Egyptians. "Traverse Egypt," says a writer who knows more of the ancient country than almost any other living person, "examine the scenes sculptured or painted on the walls of the chapels attached to tombs, consult the inscriptions graven on the rocks or traced with ink on the papyrus rolls, and you will be compelled to modify your mistaken notion of the Egyptians being a nation of philosophers. I defy you to find anything more gay, more amusing, more freshly simple, than this good-natured Egyptian people, which was fond of life and felt a profound pleasure in its existence. Far from desiring death, they addressed prayers to the gods to preserve them in life, and to give them a happy old age—an old age that should reach, if possible, to the 'perfect term of no years.' They gave themselves up to pleasures of every kind; they sang, they drank, they danced, they delighted in making excursions into the country, where hunting and fishing were occupations reserved especially for the nobility. In conformity with this inclination towards pleasure, sportive proposals, a pleasantry that was perhaps over-free, witticisms, raillery, and a mocking spirit, were in vogue among the people, and fun was allowed entrance even into the tombs. In the large schools the masters had a difficulty in training the young and keeping down their passion for amusements. When oral exhortation failed of success, the cane was used pretty smartly in its place; for the wise men of the land had a saying that 'a boy's ears grow on his back.'"5

      Herodotus tells us how gaily the Egyptians kept their festivals, thousands of the common people—men, women, and children together—crowding into the boats, which at such times covered the Nile, the men piping, and the women clapping their hands or striking their castanets, as they passed from town to town along the banks of the stream, stopping at the various landing-places, and challenging the inhabitants to a contest of good-humoured Billingsgate. From the monuments we see how the men sang at their labours—here as they trod the wine-press or the dough-trough, there as they threshed out the corn by driving the oxen through the golden heaps. In one case the words of a harvest-song have come down to us:

      "Thresh for yourselves," they sang, "thresh for yourselves,

       O oxen, thresh for yourselves, for yourselves—

       Bushels for yourselves, bushels for your masters!"

      Their light-hearted drollery sometimes found vent in caricature. The grand sculptures wherewith a king strove to perpetuate the memory of his warlike exploits were travestied by satirists, who reproduced the scenes upon papyrus as combats between cats and rats. The amorous follies of the monarch were held up to derision by sketches of a harem interior, where the kingly wooer was represented by a lion, and his favourites of the softer sex by gazelles. Even in serious scenes depicting the trial of souls in the next world, the sense of humour breaks out, where the bad man, transformed into a pig or a monkey, walks off with a comical air of surprise and discomfiture.

      It does not, however, help us much towards the true knowledge of a people to scan their frames or study their facial angle, or even to contemplate the outer aspect of their daily life. We want to know their thoughts, their innermost feelings, their hopes, their fears—in a word, their belief. Nothing tells the character of a people so much as their religion; and we are only dealing superficially with the outward shows of things until we get down to the root of their being, the conviction, or convictions, held in the recesses of a people's heart. What, then, was the Egyptian religion? What did they worship? What did they reverence? What future did they look forward to?

      Enter the huge courts of an Egyptian СКАЧАТЬ