Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ of the Egyptian empire, already above two thousand years, in the day when Cecrops was training his band of followers, to lead them in search of a place whereon to build Athens; – in a day long preceding that when Ceres was wandering about the earth in search of her daughter.

      It was about this time that a still more important event than even the founding of Athens had taken place. We all know how a certain Egyptian lady went out one day to bathe, and what was found by her maidens in a rushy spot on the banks of the Nile. That lady was the daughter of one of the Pharaohs of Memphis, at a time (as some think) shortly before the union on one head of the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. When she brought home the child found among the rushes, she little thought that that infant head was to become the organ of a wisdom that should eclipse the glory of Sesostris, and mainly determine the spiritual destinies of the human race for a longer course of centuries than even Egypt had yet seen.

      When the Shepherd kings and their army were driven out of Egypt, many of their people remained as slaves, and were employed on the public works. The Hebrews were also thus employed – latterly on the fortifications of Thoum and Heliopolis; and the Egyptians confounded the two races of aliens in a common hatred. From the prevalence of leprosy among the Hebrews, and other causes, they were considered an unclean people; and they were sent by the Pharaoh of their day, under the warning of the priests, to live by themselves in the district allotted to them. Whether the Pharaoh who opposed the departure of this army of slaves was Thothmes III., or his son, Amunoph II., or some later king, is undetermined; but it is believed on high authority that it was Thothmes III.,¹⁴ and that he reigned many years after the Exodus. The date of the Exodus is agreed upon as about B.C. 1491, whoever was the Pharaoh reigning at the time. There is no assertion in the Mosaic narrative that Pharaoh himself was lost in the Red Sea,¹⁵ nor that the whole of his host perished; nor is there any allusion in the Song of Moses to the death of the sovereign: and some of the Hebrew traditions declare¹⁶ that Pharaoh survived, and extended his conquests afterwards into Assyria. Thus the supposition that the Israelites marched out in an early year of the reign of this monarch is not irreconcileable with his having reigned thirty-nine years, as Egyptian history declares that he did. Manetho mentions their numbers to have been eighty thousand when they were sent to live by themselves; and it is curious on this account, and on some others, to find the number assigned by the Mosaic history so high as six hundred thousand, besides women and children. Even if we suppose a proportion of these to have been their fellow-slaves of the Shepherd Race, who, being confounded with the Hebrews by their masters, took this opportunity of leaving the country, it gives us a high idea of the power and population of Egypt in those days that such a body could be abstracted from the working class of the country, and leave behind a sufficient force for the achievement of such wars and arts as we know were prosecuted after their departure.¹⁷

      As our chief interest in Egypt was till lately from its being the scene of the early life of the Hebrew nation, we are apt to look for records of the Hebrews on the monuments wherever we go. I am convinced that none have been found relating to their connection with Egypt – none relating to them at all, till the long subsequent time when Jerusalem was conquered by Sheshonk (Shishak). In my opinion, it would be more surprising if there had been such records than that there are not. There is nothing in the presence of a body of slaves to require or suggest a monumental record, unless those slaves were made so by conquest, and had previously been a nation. The Hebrews were not a nation, and had no dream of being so till Moses began the mighty work of making them one. When they had a confirmed national existence; when their great King Solomon had married into the line of the Pharaohs, and their national interests came into collision with those of Egypt, we find them, among other nations, in the train of the captives of Sheshonk, on the walls of El Karnac. Some Hebrew names among those of the Egyptian months,¹⁸ and a sprinkling of Hebrew words in the Coptic language, are, I believe, the only traceable memorials in Egypt of the residence of the Israelites.

      According to Pliny, one of the Ramases was on the throne of Egypt when Troy was taken: and within thirty years of that time, King Solomon married a daughter of one of the Pharaohs. How great Thebes had long been is clear from the mention of Upper Egypt in Homer, who says, perhaps truly enough in one sense, that it was the birthplace of some of tile Greek gods; and that its inhabitants were so wise as to be favourites, and even hosts of those gods. It was with these wise Thebans (then one with the Ethiopians) that Jupiter and his family were supposed by the Greeks to be making holiday, when out of reach, as it seemed, of the prayers of the besiegers of Troy. The Theban family of monarchs, however, was by this time declining in power; and after a century or two of weakness, they were displaced by stronger men from a higher station up the river; and Egypt was governed by princes from the hitherto subordinate province of Ethiopia. In three generations, Thebes ceased to be the capital of Egypt; and the seat of government was removed to Saïs in the Delta. This event happened nearly 700 years B.C. From this time, we have the advantage of certainty of dates, within, at least, the range of a few months. We have come down to the record of Babylonian eclipses, and the skies light up the history of the earth.

      It was in this age that the downfall of old Egypt was provided for by the introduction of Greek influences into the Delta, at the time when the seat of sovereignty was there. While the national throne stood at Thebes, the religion, philosophy, learning, and language of the ancient race could be little, if at all, affected by what was doing in other parts of the world: but when the Thebaid became a province, and the metropolis was open to visits from the voyagers of the Mediterranean, the exclusively Egyptian character began to give way; and while Egypt furnished, through these foreigners, the religion, philosophy, and art of the whole civilised world, she was beginning to lose the nationality which was her strength. Nechepsus, one of the kings of Saïs, was a learned priest, and wrote on astronomy. His writings were in the Greek language. The kings of Sais now began to employ Greek mercenaries. Psammitichus I. not only employed as soldiers large numbers of Ionian and Carian immigrants, but, as Herodotus tells us,¹⁹ committed to them the children of the Egyptians, to be taught Greek, and gave them lands and other advantages for settlement in the Delta. Of course, this was displeasing to his native subjects, and the national unity was destroyed. One curious circumstance occurred under this king, which reveals much of the popular temper, and which has left some remarkable traces behind it, as will be seen in my next chapter. Psammitichus placed three armies of Egyptians on the three frontiers of Egypt,²⁰ That on the southern frontier, stationed at Elephantine, grew impatient, after a neglect of three years. Finding their petitions for removal unanswered, and their pay not forthcoming, they resolved to emigrate, and away they marched, up the river, as far beyond Meroë as Meroë is beyond Elephantine, and there lands were given them, where their descendants were found, three centuries afterwards. The king himself pursued and overtook them, and endeavoured by promises and prayers, and by appeals to them not to forsake their gods and their homes, to induce them to return. They told him, however, that they would make homes for themselves, and marched on. Their numbers being, as Herodotus tells, two hundred and forty thousand men, it was impossible to constrain them. The king took with him a force of Greek mercenaries, whom he sent some way, as we shall see by-and-by, after the deserters; but it appears that he did not go higher than Elephantine.

      While we thus see how Egypt became weakened in preparation for downfall, it is pretty clear, on the other hand, how the process went on by which the rest of the world became enlightened by her knowledge, and ripened by her wisdom.

      About thirty years after Saïs became the capital of Egypt, the first of the Wise Men of Greece, Thales, was born. He went to Egypt to improve his knowledge – and remarkable indeed was the knowledge he brought away. He was the first Greek who predicted an eclipse. He forewarned his Ionian countrymen of that celebrated eclipse which, when it happened, suspended the battle between the Medes and Lydians. It was Thales, we are told, who, after his return from Egypt, fixed the sun's orbit, or determined the duration of the year to be 365 days. It was in Egypt that he obtained his knowledge of Geometry: and he it was who imparted, on his return, the great discovery that the angle in a semicircle is always a right angle. In Egypt he ascertained the elevation of the pyramids by observing the shadows of measurable objects in relation to their height. His connection with Egypt СКАЧАТЬ