Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ that the language having, by lapse of ages, lost its original power of grammatical inflexion, a quality which it seems scarcely possible to restore, the relations of ideas in a sentence, which in the more modern Coptic are expressed by auxiliary terms, must be disposed by conjecture, or by doubtful internal comparison and analogy. It is easy to see how thus, while names and titles and all declaratory terms may be read, when once the alphabet is secured, all beyond must be in a high degree conjectural, at least till the stock of terms is largely increased. The stock is on the increase, however. Champollion made a noble beginning; Dr. Lepsius has corrected him in some important instances; and the Chevalier Bunsen has offered a Lexicon of the old Egyptian language, placing above four hundred words in comparison with the known Coptic, This is a supply which will go a good way in reading the legends on the monuments; by which process, again, we may be helped to more. The very singular nature of the alphabet being once understood, and the beginning of a Lexicon being supplied, there seems reason to hope that the process of discovery may be carried on by the application of one fresh mind after another to the task which all must see to be as important as any which can occupy the human faculties. Or, if all do not see this, it must be from insufficient knowledge of the facts: insufficient knowledge of the amount of the records, of their antiquity, and of their general nature. When the traveller gazes at vast buildings covered over in every part with writing; every architrave, every abacus, every recess, and every projection, all the lines of the cornice, and all the intervals of the sculptures, he is overwhelmed with the sense of the immensity of knowledge locked up from him before his eyes. Let those at home imagine the ecclesiastical history of Christendom written up thus on every inch of the surface of its cathedrals, and the civil history of any country, from its earliest times, thus engraved on all its public buildings and palaces, and he may form some conception of what it would be, in regard to mere amount, to be able to read the inscriptions in Egypt. If he is also aware that the religion, philosophy, and science of the world for many thousand years, a religion, philosophy, and science which reveal a greater nobleness, depth, and extent, the more they are explored, are recorded there, under our very eyes and hands, he will see that no nobler task awaits any lover of truth and of his race, than that of enabling mankind to read these earliest volumes of its own history.

      And the world has no other resource in regard to this object. There is no doubt about the ancient Egyptians having had an extensive written literature: but it is lost. It was shelved when the Greek language and literature became the fashion in Egypt: and previous circumstances had been unfavourable to the preservation of the rolls of goat and sheep skins, and the papyri, which contained the best thoughts of the best men of five or six thousand years ago. We may mourn over this; – we must mourn, for it is certain that they knew things that we are yet ignorant of, and that they could do things which we can only wonder at: but the records are lost, and no man can help it now. There has been later damage, too, clearly traceable. We know how early Christianity was introduced into Egypt: and all who have been there have seen how indefatigable the early Christians were in destroying everything relating to the ancient people and their faith that they could lay their hands on. Again, the Emperor Severus carefully collected the writings which related to the mysteries of the priests, and buried them in the tomb of Alexander. And again, Diocletian ordered all the Egyptian books on alchemy to be destroyed, lest these makers of gold should become too rich to remain dependent on Rome. Thus scarcely a vestige of the ancient writing on destructible substances remains, and the monumental records are our only resource. While we take to heart the terrible loss, let us take to heart also the value of the resource, and search for the charm which may remove the spell of dumbness from these eloquent old teachers. Perhaps the solemn Memnon may yet respond if touched by the warm bright rays of zeal and intelligence, and the great Valley may take up the echoes from end to end. And this is a case where he who gives his labour quickly gives twice. Time is a more efficient defacer than even the Coptic Christians: and the indefatigable enemy, the Desert, can bury old records on a vaster scale than any Severus. There are rulers bearing sway, too, who are not more enlightened than the mischievous Diocletian.

      As for the Egyptian method of recording the language, there were three kinds of writing: the Hieroglyphic or picture writing; the Hieratic – an abridged form of the hieroglyphic, used by the priests for their records; and the Enchorial, in popular use, which appears to be a still further abridgment of the Hieratic, whose signs have flowed into a running hand. Written language is found among the very earliest memorials of this most ancient people.

      As for their social organisation, we know more of it than of most particulars concerning them. The most important, however, in the state appears to have been that of the caste of Priests. The monarch must be of that class. If a member of the next (the military) caste was made king, he must first become a priest.³⁷ – Herodotus says that Egyptian society was composed of seven castes; Plato says six;³⁸ Diodorus Siculus says five.³⁹ The classification of Herodotus is so strange that it is clear that he included under his titles some division of employments which we do not understand. He declares⁴⁰ the seven classes to be the Priests, the Military, the Herdsmen, the Swineherds, the Tradesmen, the Interpreters, and the Pilots and Seamen. The classification of Diodorus will help us better. He gives us the Priests, the Military, the Husbandmen, the Tradesmen and Artificers, and, lowest of all, the Shepherds; and with them the Poulterers, Fishermen, and Servants. The division indicates much of the national mind, as I need not point out. We must remember, throughout our study of the monuments, that the priests were not occupied with religion alone. They had possession, besides, of the departments of politics, law, medicine, science, and philosophy. It is curious to speculate on what must have been the division of employments among them, when we read in Herodotus how they partitioned out their art of medicine, – there being among them no general practitioners, as we should say, but physicians of the heart, the lungs, the abdomen; and oculists, dentists, etc.⁴¹ If such a subdivision was followed out through the whole range of study and practice in all professions, the priestly caste must contain within itself a sufficient diversity to preserve its enlightenment and magnanimity better than we, with our modern view of the tendencies of a system of castes, might suppose.

      I have, perhaps, said enough of this ancient people to prepare for an entrance upon the study of their monuments. The other castes, and a multitude of details of personal and social condition and usage, will come before us when we turn to the sculptures and pictures. Before going on to their successors, we may call to mind the grounds which Herodotus assigns for his fulness of detail about the Pharaohs and their people. He says, »I shall enlarge further on what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is no region besides where one sees so many works which are admirable and beyond expression.«⁴²

      Beyond expression indeed are those great works. And do we not know that wherever men's works have a grandeur or beauty beyond expression the feeling which suggested and inspired them is yet more beyond expression still. O! how happy should I be if I could arouse in others by this book, as I experienced it myself from the monuments, any sense of the depth and solemnity of the IDEAS which were the foundation of the old Egyptian faith! I did not wait till I went to Egypt to remember that the faculty of Reverence is inherent in all men, and that its natural exercise is always to be sympathised with, irrespective of its objects. I did not wait till I went to Egypt to become aware that every permanent reverential observance has some great Idea at the bottom of it, and that it is our business not to deride or be shocked at the method of manifestation, but to endeavour to apprehend the Idea concerned. I vividly remember the satisfaction of ascertaining the ideas that lay at the bottom of those most barbarous South Sea Island practices of Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism. If some sympathy in conception and feeling is possible in even this lowest case, how far should we be from contempt or levity in studying the illustrations of Egyptian faith and hope which we find blazoned on works »admirable and beyond expression!« With all Men's tendency to praise the olden time, – to say that the former times are better than these, – we find that it is usually only the wisdom of their own forefathers that they extol; merely a former mode of holding and acting upon their own existing ideas. They have no such praise for the forefathers of another race, who had other ideas and acted them out differently. Instead of endeavouring to ascertain the ideas, they revile or ridicule the manifestation, which was СКАЧАТЬ