Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ their conceptions, and can never be interpreted by them. Thus we, as a society, take upon ourselves to abhor and utterly despise the »Idolatry« of the Egyptians, without asking ourselves whether we comprehend anything of the principles of Egyptian theology. The children on their stools by our firesides wonder eternally how people so clever could be so silly as to pay homage to crocodiles and cats: and their parents too often agree with them, instead of pointing out that there might be, and certainly were, reasons in the minds of Egyptians which made it a very different thing in them to cherish sacred animals from what it would be in us Everybody at home talks of the ugly and grotesque character of the Egyptians works of art: and no wonder, if they judge, with English mind and English eyes, from broken specimens in the British Museum One can only ask them to trust something to the word of travellers who have seen such works in their plenitude, in their own locality and proper connection. Probably some people in Greece were talking of the ugly and grotesque character of such Egyptian decorations as they might have heard of, while Herodotus was gazing on them on their native soil, and declaring in his own mind, as he afterwards did to the whole world, and to all time, that they were »admirable and beyond expression.« – I would ask for these considerations to be borne in mind, not only for the sake of justice to the earliest philosophers of the human race (as far as we know), but because it is impossible to appreciate the monuments – I may say impossible to see them – through any other medium than that of a teachable mind, working with a sympathising heart. If anyone hesitates to grant me this much let me ask him whether he would be willing to have the Christian religion judged of, five thousand years hence, by such a one as himself, when its existing forms shall have been long forgotten and its eternal principles shall be expanded in some yet unknown mode of manifestation? Supposing oblivion to have been by that time as completely wrapped round Catholic and Protestant ritual as round the ceremonial of Egyptian worship, would a Christian be content to have his faith judged of by a careless traveller of another race, who should thrust a way among the buried pillars of our cathedral aisles and look for superstition in every recess, and idolatry in every chapel; and who, lighting upon some carved fox and goose or grinning mask, should go home and declare that Christianity was made up of what was idolatrous, unideal, and grotesque? If he is aware that in our Christianity there is much that will not appear on our cathedrals five thousand years hence, let him only remember that there maybe much that is ideal and holy in other faiths which we have not hart the opportunity of appreciating. I believe this to be the case with every faith which, from the first appearance of the human race upon our globe, has met and gratified the faculty of Reverence in any considerable number of men. If I did not believe this with regard to the religion and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, I must have looked at them merely as a wonderful show, and should certainly have visited them in vain.

      Here, then, we take leave of the Pharaohs and their times; and, we may say, of their people; for the spirit of the old Egyptians was gone, and only a lifeless body was left, to be used as it pleased their conquerors. We hear of the brilliant reigns of the Ptolemies, who now succeeded to the Egyptian throne: but theirs was a Greek civilisation, which, though unquestionably derived from Egypt many centuries before, was now as essentially different from that of the old Egyptians as were the characteristics of the two nations.

      We must ever observe that there was no true fusion of the minds of the two races. The Greeks learned and adopted much from the Egyptians: but the Egyptians, instead of adopting from the Greeks, died out. No new god was ever introduced into Egypt: while the Greeks, after having long before derived many of their gods from Egypt, now accommodated their deities to those of the Egyptians, and in an arbitrary and superficial way adopted the old symbols. There is every reason to believe that the priests, when employed by the Ptolemies to interpret the monuments, fitted their new and compounded ideas to the old symbols, and thus produced a theology and philosophy which any resuscitated Pharaoh would have disavowed. The Greeks took no pains to learn the Egyptian language, or to enter into the old Egyptian mind; and there is therefore endless confusion in the accounts they have given to the world of the old gods and the old monarchs of the Nile valley. To understand anything of the monuments of the times we are now entering upon, it will be necessary to bear in mind that the Ptolemies and Caesars built upon Pharaonic foundations, and in imitation of Pharaonic edifices; but necessarily with such an admixture of Greek and Roman ideas with their Egyptian conceptions as to cause a complete corruption of ancient art. It is necessary never to forget this, or we shall be perpetually misled. We may admire the temples of the Ptolemies and Caesars as much or as little as we please; but we must remember that they are not Egyptian.

      Every country weak enough to need the aid of Greek mercenaries was sure to become, ere long, Greek property. It was so with Persia, and with its province, Egypt. The event was hastened by the desire of the Egyptians to be quit of their Persian masters. Alexander the Great was the conqueror, as everybody knows. He chose his time when the chief part of the Persian forces of Egypt was absent – sent to fight the Greeks in Asia Minor. When once Alexander had set foot in Pelusium, the rest was easy; for the towns opened their gates to him with joy; and he had only to march to Heliopolis and then to Memphis. He gave his countenance, as well as he knew how, to the old worship, restoring the temples and honouring the symbols of the gods at Memphis, and marching to the Oasis of Amun, to present gifts to the chief deity of the Egyptians, and to claim to be his son. It was on his way there, by the coast, that he saw in passing the harbour where Alexandria now stands, and perceived its capabilities. He ordered the improvement of the harbour, and the building of the city which would have immortalised his name, if he had done nothing else. This visit of Alexander the Great to Egypt took place 332 B.C. He left orders that the country should be governed by its own laws, and that its religion should be absolutely respected. This was wise and humane; and no doubt we owe some of our knowledge of more ancient times to this conservative principle of Alexander's government. But he was not practically sustained by his deputies; and he died eight years after his visit to Egypt. – His successor gave the government of Egypt into the hands of Ptolemy, who called himself the son of Lagus, but was commonly believed to be an illegitimate son of Philip of Macedon. In seventeen years he became king; and with him begins the great line of the Ptolemies, of whom sixteen reigned in succession for 275 years, till the witch Cleopatra let the country go into the hands of the Romans, to become a Roman province, in 30 B.C.

      It was under the government of the first Ptolemy that Greek visitors again explored the Nile valley as high as Thebes, and higher. Hecataeus of Abdera was one of these travellers, and a great traveller he was; for, if Diodorus Siculus tells us truly, he once stood on Salisbury Plain, and saw there the great temple of the Sun which we call Stonehenge:⁴³ and he certainly stood on the plain of Thebes, and saw the great temple of the Sun there. The priests had recovered their courage, under the just rule of the Greeks, and had brought out the gold and silver and other treasures of the temples which had been carefully hidden from the Persians. Thebes, however, was almost dead by this time; and its monuments were nearly all which a stranger had to see. We are glad to know that the records of the priests told of forty-seven tombs existing in the Valley of Kings' Sepulchres, of which seventeen had at that time been discovered under their concealment of earth and laid open. Some of these, and some fresh ones, have been explored in our own days; but it is an animating thing to believe that there were at least forty-seven originally; and that many yet remain, untouched since they were closed on the demise of the Pharaohs. Whose will be the honour of laying them open? – not in the Cambyses spirit of rapine; but in all honour and reverence, in search of treasures which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves carry away – a treasure of light out of the darkened place, and of knowledge out of that place where usually no device or knowledge is found!

      We are grieved now to lose the old Egyptian names: but at this time they naturally become exchanged for Greek. On becomes Heliopolis. This becomes Abydos. Thebes (called in the Bible No Ammen) becomes Diospolis Magna. Pilak becomes Philae. Petpieh is Aphroditopolis (the city of Athor). Even the country itself, from being called Khem (answering to Ham in the Bible), is henceforth known as Aegyptus.

      In the reign of the second Ptolemy lived a writer of uncommon interest and importance to us now: – Manetho, the Egyptian priest. We have only fragments of the writings of Manetho; but they are of great and immediate value to us: СКАЧАТЬ