Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ historian to separate the true ideas from their environment of fiction, and to mark the time when the narrative, from being mythical, becomes historically true; – to classify the two orders of ancient historians – both inestimable in their way – the Poets who perpetuate national Ideas, and the Historians who perpetuate national Facts. – With regard to Egypt, we are in possession of as much of this early material as any nation has furnished; and we have the monuments besides.

      These monuments consist of buildings or excavations, – of the sculptures upon them, – and of their inscriptions. From the edifices or caves we may learn much of the condition, mind, and manners of the people who wrought them, and, if their dates can be obtained, in historical order. – From their sculptures we may learn much of the personages, divine and human, about whom they thought most; and their inscriptions are of inestimable use in identifying these personages, and in declaring their dates. Being thus in possession of mythical legends, of the writings of historians, and of edifices and excavations covered with sculptures and inscriptions, we are as well supplied with records of the early history of Egypt as we can probably ever be with regard to any ancient people; and better than we yet are with regard to any other of the nations of the old world.

      The legends relating to ancient Egypt are preserved in the works of its historians. It is the business of modern inquirers to separate them from the true historical material, and to extract from them, where possible, the essential Ideas which they embody.

      The chief historians of Egypt are Hecataeus of Miletus, who was at Thebes about half a century before Herodotus, and some fragments of whose writings have come down to us: – Herodotus, from whom we learn more than from any other: – the writer of the book of Genesis: – Hecataeus of Abdera, from whose narrative extracts may be found in the works of Diodorus Siculus: – Manetho, an Egyptian, of whom also we have only extracts in other authors, but who supplies very valuable information: – Eratosthenes of Cyrene, whose writings are at once illustrative of those of Manetho and a check upon them: Diodorus Siculus, who travelled in Egypt and wrote a history of it, rather more than half a century before the Christian era: Strabo, who has left us a full account of what he saw in Egypt, between Alexandria and the First Cataract: and Abdallatif, an Arabian physician, who supplies a valuable report of the state of the Nile Valley and its people when he visited them in the twelfth century. – It is the business of modern inquirers to separate what these historians derived from the depositories of the national mythi from what they personally observed: to compare their works with one another, and to apply them as a key (where this can be done) to the monumental records.

      As to the use of the monumental records, several precautions are necessary. Modern inquirers must beware of interpreting what they see by their own favourite ideas – as travellers do who contrive to see Hebrew groups among the Egyptian sculptures: they must diligently and patiently work out the knowledge of the ancient language and its signs, and beware of straining the little they know of these to accommodate any historical theory they may carry in their minds: and they must remember that the edifice and its sculptures are not always of the same date, and that therefore what is true of the one is not necessarily true of the other.

      Without going into any detail (which would fill a volume if entered upon at all) about the respective values of these authorities, and their agreements and conflicts, I may give a slight sketch of what competent modern inquirers believe we have learned from them.

      For our first glimpse into ancient Egyptian life we must go back upon the track of Time far further than we have been accustomed to suppose that track to extend. People who had believed all their lives that the globe and Man were created together, were startled when the new science of geology revealed to them the great fact that Man is a comparatively new creation on the earth, whose oceans and swamps and jungles were aforetime inhabited by monsters never seen by human eye but in their fossil remains. People who enter Egypt with the belief that the human race has existed only six thousand years, and that at that date the world was uninhabited by men, except within a small circuit in Asia, must undergo a somewhat similar revolution of ideas. All new research operates to remove further back the date of the formation of the Egyptian empire. The differences between the dates given by legendary records and by modern research (with the help of contemporary history) are very great; but the one agrees as little as the other with the popular notion that the human race is only six thousand years old.

      When Hecataeus of Miletus was at Thebes, about 500 B.C., he spoke, as Herodotus tells us,⁵ to the priests of Amun, of his genealogy, declaring himself to be the sixteenth in descent from a god. Upon this, the priests conducted him into a great building of the temple, where they pointed out to him (as afterwards to Herodotus) the statues of their high priest. Each high priest placed a colossal wooden statue of himself in this place during his life; and each was the son of his predecessor. The priests would not admit that any of these was the son of a god. From first to last they were of human origin; and here, in direct lineal succession, were 345. Taking the average length of human life, how many thousand years would be occupied by the succession of 345 high priests, in a direct line from father to son! According to the priests, it was nearly 5000 years from the time of Horus. They further informed Herodotus that gods did reign in Egypt before they deputed their power to mortals.⁶ They spoke of eight gods who reigned first, among whom was one answering to Pan of the Greeks: then came twelve of another series; and, again, twelve more, the offspring of the second series; and of these Osiris was one; and it was not till after the reign of his son Horus that the first of these 345 high priests came into power. From Osiris to king Amasis the priests reckoned 15,000 years, declaring that they had exact registers of the successive lives which had filled up the time.⁷ – Such is the legendary history as it existed 500 years before Christ. We can gather from it thus much, that the priests then looked back upon a long reach of time – and believed the art of registering to be of an old date.

      Here we have the earliest report of dates offered us. According to the latest researches,⁸ we cannot place the formation of the Egyptian empire under Menes nearer to us than 5500 years ago. And the Egyptians were then a civilised people, subject to legislation and executive authority, pursuing trade, and capable of the arts. A longer or shorter series of centuries must be allotted for bringing them up to this state, according to the views of the students of social life; but the shortest must bring us back to the current date of the creation of man. How these five or six thousand years are filled up we may see hereafter;

      Leaving it to my readers to fix for themselves the point of time for our survey of the most ancient period of Egyptian history, I may be permitted to appoint the place. Let us take our stand above the Second Cataract; – on the rock of Abooseer, perhaps, where I could only look over southwards, and not go and learn. This is a good station, because it is a sort of barrier between two chains of monuments – a frontier resting-place, whence one may survey the area of ancient Egyptian civilisation from end to end.

      Looking down the river, northwards, beyond the Nubian region (then Ethiopia), beyond the First Cataract, and far away over the great marsh which occupied the Nile valley, we see, coming out of the darkness of oblivion, Menes, the first Egyptian king, turning the river from its course under the Libyan mountain into a new bed, in the middle of the valley.⁹ Thus the priests of Thebes told Herodotus, saying that Menes made the dykes by which the land was reclaimed on which Memphis afterwards stood. It must strike everyone that this period 5500 years ago, must have been one of an advanced civilisation, such a work as this embankment requiring scientific ideas and methods, apt tools, and trained men. The priests ascribed to this same king the building of Memphis, and of the great temple of Phthah (answering to Vulcan) in that city. They read to Herodotus a long list of sovereigns (three hundred and thirty) who succeeded Menes, of whom one was an Egyptian woman and eighteen were Ethiopian kings,¹⁰ That there should have been a temple of Phthah implies the establishment of a priesthood. That a woman should have occupied the throne seems to imply the establishment of a principle of hereditary succession; or, at least, it tells of the subordination, in this early age, of force to authority. That there should have been Ethiopian sovereigns among the Egyptian implies a СКАЧАТЬ