# The Religion of Ancient Egypt/Lecture II

ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS
OF
EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.
I promised to explain the kind of evidence which compels us to assign a very remote antiquity to Egyptian civilization—so remote indeed as to appear simply fabulous to men whose studies of ancient history have been confined to Greece and Rome, and who know very soon historical evidence fails at the distance of a few centuries from the Christian era. Such men are not unnaturally inclined to suspect us of uncritically attaching importance to exaggerated or even fictitious numbers handed down by untrustworthy authorities. Such a suspicion is entirely without foundation. There is not a single Egyptian monument known which in its bearings upon chronology is liable to the charge of numerical exaggeration. The monuments, as a rule, ​never speak except of contemporary events. There are a few instances in which a temple built by an ancient sovereign is said to have been repaired or rebuilt by another, but the interval between the two sovereigns is unfortunately never stated.
Although Mena is the first of the Egyptian kings, and is repeatedly named, dates are never reckoned from his or from any other era, but are given by the year of the reigning king. This is never so high as to justify a doubt. We can certainly conceive the case of a forged inscription on a tombstone, saying that John Smith died on the 9th September, 1876, or (were such the custom of the country) in the 39th year of Queen Victoria; but unless good reasons for rejecting such a statement are produced, the law of historical evidence compels us to admit it. Most of the documents upon which we rely for Egyptian chronology are of this simple nature, and no one who has seen the tombs or buildings from which they have been taken, can dream for an instant that these inscriptions are less trustworthy than those in an English churchyard.
The manifest defect for chronological purposes of such inscriptions is, that the last monumental year which happens to be preserved to us of a king is not necessarily the last of his reign. An error of several ​(perhaps of many) years is possible in each reign when there is no direct evidence to the contrary. But the error is at all events not on the side of exaggerated numbers.
Still more important than the monuments which mention the year of a king, are those in which two or more sovereigns of the same period are mentioned, especially if their succession or other precise data are given. Such is the treaty made in the twenty-first of his reign between Rameses II. and the king of the Cheta, wherein Rameses II. calls himself the son of Seti I., who in his turn is called the son of Rameses I. There is a very large number of inscriptions belonging to personages who have been born in one reign and died in another, or who have served several kings in succession. And the inscriptions of the same period naturally confirm one another, or supply details which were missing. Thus, to take the case of the eighteenth dynasty, the sepulchral inscription of Aahmes, the son of Abana, gives the account of a naval officer who served three sovereigns one after the other,—Aahmes I., Amenhotep I. and Tehutimes I. (commonly called Thothmes or ​Thothmosis). His father, the same inscription tells us, served the king Sekenen-Rā. Another well-known inscription, now in the Louvre at Paris, begins the tale of its hero in the reign of Aahmes I., and ends it in that of Tehutimes III. The tablet of Nebuaiu, now in the Museum at Bulaq, gives thanks to Tehutimes III. and his son Amenhotep II., who had honoured Nebuaiu. King Amenhotep II. himself, on a tablet at Amada, speaks of Tehutimes III. as his father. And a third and independent witness, Amenemheb, tells us that Tehutimes III., in whose service he was, died on the last day of the month Phamenoth, in the 54th year of his reign, and that he was succeeded by his son Amenhotep II. The entire succession of the dynasty is established on a large mass of evidence of the same kind, as may be seen at length in an excellent dissertation of Dr. Wiedeman. And the chronology of other periods has been established in like manner.
The most remarkable series of inscriptions which has been utilized for chronological purposes consists of the inscriptions relating to the Apis bulls, whose wonderful tombs were discovered by M. Mariette. One of these sacred animals was born in the twenty-eighth year of king Sheshonk III., lived twenty years, and died in ​the second year of king Pamai. Another Apis was born in the twenty-sixth year of Taharqa, and died in the twentieth year of Psammitichus I. A hundred and sixty-eight tablets in honour of this one Apis have been found, fifty-three of which are dated. Another Apis, born on the nineteenth day of the month Mechir, in the fifty-third year of Psammitichus I., lived sixteen years, seven months and seventeen days, and died on the sixth Paophi of the sixteenth year of Necho II. This bull was succeeded by another, born on the seventh Paophi of the sixteenth year of Necho II., lived seventeen years, six months and five days, and died on the twelfth day of the month Pharmuti, of the twelfth year of king Apries.
As documents of this kind bring us down past the time of Cambyses and even into the Ptolemaic period, that is, into a period of well-ascertained chronology, we are able, by means of the Apis inscriptions alone, to go back from Cambyses to the first year of Taharqa, about seven hundred years before Christ, the limit of possible error being two or three years at the utmost. And with Taharqa (the Tirhaka of Scripture), who was the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, begins, as Brugsch observes, the latest period of the history of the Pharaohs.
The first kind of monuments which I have described is useful as furnishing the highest ascertainable monumental year of a reign; the second kind enables us besides to determine the order of succession of reigns. Both these kinds of monuments are contemporaneous with the persons and events mentioned upon them. But besides these, there are monuments giving long lists of sovereigns, all of whom cannot have been contemporaneous. Such are the famous tablets of Abydos, that of Saqâra, the chamber of Karnak, and some others. The royal hieratic canon of Turin (which is unfortunately in so mutilated a condition as practically to be of little use, and which enumerates many kings and gives the lengths of their reigns) is a document of the same historical character, at least from the point of view from which I am now looking at the matter. In the chamber of Karnak, Tehutimes III. is represented as making an offering to sixty-one of his royal ​predecessors, whose names are given. At Abydos, Seti I., together with his son Rameses, then heir-apparent, offers incense to no less than seventy-six kings.
You will at once understand the importance of such a monument, if it can be relied upon, when I remind you that the Israelites in bondage are said to have been employed in building the treasure cities (as the Hebrew meschenoth is commonly translated), or rather sanctuaries, of Pithom and Rameses. It may be considered absolutely certain that no place in Egypt ever had the name of Rameses till the appearance of the celebrated hero of the name, who is actually represented on this monument as the son and heir-apparent of Seti I. The name of the place is as significant as the names of Alexandria, Antioch, Ptolemais, Seleucia, Washington or Napoleonville. The name of Rameses is a very peculiar one, the latter part of it consisting of the reduplicated form of the verb mes, not of the simple form, like the names Rames, Aahmes, Tehutimes, Chonsumes, and I do not believe any instance ​of it will ever be found more ancient than that of Rameses I., the grandfather of the great conqueror. Now if this tablet of Abydos is correct, seventy-six kings, that is, very many more kings than can be counted in English history, must have reigned over Egypt before the first books of the Bible were written. But if we go back in English history to Ethelred II. in 976, we shall find that not more than forty-four sovereigns have reigned during a thousand years, and the average length of an Egyptian king's reign cannot be shown to be shorter than that of an English sovereign.
But are the names on the tablet of Abydos names of real personages, or are they (or at least some of them) as imaginary as the kings of Britain, beginning with Brutus, as reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the kings of Scotland, beginning with Fergus I., whose portraits adorn the walls of Holyrood? There is but one way of settling the question, and that is by looking out for evidence which will confirm or contradict that given by these royal lists. As far as the test of verification has been applied to these lists, there is no reason whatever for distrusting them. Instead of admitting sovereigns who have never lived, they have for certain reasons omitted many, the existence of whom ​is quite certain. The intention of the tablets was not historical or chronological, but simply devotional, and the selection and arrangement of names consequently vary, though the most considerable names are the same in all.
M. de Rougé has carefully studied all the monuments which belong to the first six dynasties. The earliest monuments that can be found belong to king Seneferu, the 20th on the list of Abydos; and from this king till the 38th on the list, the evidence is complete, and the order of succession thoroughly established by independent inscriptions contemporaneous with the sovereigns of whom they speak. There is, for instance, the tomb at Gizeh of a queen who graced the courts of king Seneferu and the two kings who followed him. Two officers have left inscriptions which say that they had served the kings Unas and Teta. The great inscription of Una begins by saying that this officer served Teta, and ends with his services under Merenrā. This king was succeeded by his brother Neferkarā (No. 38 of the list). The tomb of the mother of these royal brothers still exists. She was the wife of Pepi-Merirā (No. 36), several monuments of whom are known; one of them, in Wádi Maghārah in the peninsula of Mount Sinai, is dated in the eighteenth year of his reign. ​No period in any history that can be named is better authenticated by contemporary monuments.
The same truth may be asserted of the twelfth dynasty, which in the tablet of Abydos is represented by Nos. 59 to 65. The number of monuments accurately dated belonging to this period is very considerable. They are all perfectly consistent with one another, and leave no doubt as to the length of each reign and of the whole dynasty. It is to this dynasty that the splendid tomb of Nahre-se-Chnumhotep at Benihassan belongs. His inscription mentions the first four sovereigns as having honoured three successive generations of his family.
Let me now speak of the omissions of this tablet, which I have selected in preference to others in consequence of its being the longest and the most intelligible as to its arrangement.
The most beautiful monuments of the eighteenth dynasty were raised by the powerful queen Hatasu, daughter of Tehutimes I., who associated her with him. She reigned for some years either alone or in conjunction with her brothers Tehutimes II. and Tehutimes III. ​successively; but her name and memory were persecuted by the latter, who resented her dominion over him during the years of his minority. Her name does not appear on the tablet of Abydos. There is also an interval between the reigns of Amenhotep III. and Hor-em-heb, which chronologically is filled up by the period of the sun-disk worshippers. Amenhotep III. was followed by a king, the fourth of the same name, who dropped it when he assumed that of Chut-en-Aten, as the founder of a new religion, which had but a very partial and short-lived success. His attempts at reformation led to his exclusion from the lists of the legitimate kings. There is monumental evidence of one or two reigns of short duration before that of Hor-em-heb, who broke up the monuments of Chut-en-Aten, and used them in the construction of his own. It is not out of place to mention the fact that the first information we obtained about this abortive attempt at the transformation of the Egyptian religion, was derived from blocks of one of the propyla of Karnak, which Mohammed Ali had brutally pulled down, that the stones might be broken up and roasted to quick-lime, in order to furnish stucco for his saltpetre works. Mr. Perring, an English architect, who was there, was surprised to find that the faces of the stones which had been placed inwards and covered with cement were sculptured with hieroglyphics of the same perfect execution as those which had been engraved on them after ​their arrangement in the new building. This appropriation, of which there are many instances, by one sovereign of materials bearing the name and inscriptions of one of his predecessors, is always of value as determining the question of priority in time.
The omission of the heretical sovereigns is easily accounted for, and Seti may have shared the dislike of Tehutimes for queen Hatasu. But no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the omission of a large number of names between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty. The immediate passage on the tablet from one of these dynasties to the other, cannot mean that the king numbered 65 was followed by the king numbered 66, who is Aahmes I. The important inscription of the naval officer Aahmes, son of Abana, which has already been quoted, mentions king Sekenen-Rā as the predecessor of Aahmes I. Sekenen-Rā is as thoroughly historical a personage as any one of our own sovereigns. There were even three kings of the name, and their tombs have actually been found at Thebes. On the other hand, the tablet of Ameni-senb, now in the Louvre, belongs to the reign of a king anterior to the eighteenth dynasty, but later than the twelfth, as it records the restoration of a temple at Abydos founded by Usertsen I. ​The interval between the twelfth and the eighteenth dynasty must have been very considerable. The time immediately preceding the eighteenth dynasty was the period of the foreign domination generally known as that of the Hyksos, or the Shepherd kings. So much is certain, but it is absolutely impossible to ascertain from Egyptian records when this period began, and how long it lasted. The 511 years which are ascribed to it by Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, are neither to be simply accepted nor rejected, but must remain subject to future verification. The only evidence from Egyptian sources which bears upon the subject is a monument of Rameses II., dated from the four hundredth year of one of these kings of foreign origin. But a considerable number of native kings must have reigned between the last king of the twelfth dynasty and the beginning of the foreign invasion. There are numerous inscriptions which prove that sovereigns powerful in the north of Egypt had extended their dominion to the very heart of Nubia. The monuments of Thebes, southern Egypt and Nubia, might be consistent with the hypothesis of a Hyksos kingdom in the north, but the presence of equally important monuments of the Sebekhoteps at Bubastis and Tanis, kings whose names occupy an important place in the chamber of Karnak, would alone be sufficient to overthrow this hypothesis. There is in the Louvre a magnificent colossal statue in real granite of ​Sebekhotep III., with reference to which M. de Rougé says: "A single statue of this excellence and of such a material shows clearly that the king who had it executed for the decoration of his temples or palaces had not yet suffered from the invasion of the Shepherds. It is evident that under his reign Egypt was still a great power, peacefully cultivating the arts." Perhaps the most interesting monument of this period is the colossal statue of the king Semench-ka-Rā (the eighteenth king of the thirteenth dynasty, according to the royal Turin papyrus), on the right shoulder of which one of the foreign kings has had his name engraved in hieroglyphic characters.
Of the kings of the eleventh dynasty, only two (Nos. 57 and 58) appear on the tablet of Abydos. Very interesting inscriptions belonging to their reigns are still extant; but other kings bearing the name of Antuf and Mentuhotep are known to us, not only by inscriptions, but by their coffins in our museums. Of Mentuhotep III., dates have been found as high as his forty-third year. And a tablet has been found representing him as being worshipped by his successor, Antuf IV. There is a very interesting fact connected with one of the monuments of this dynasty. Many years ago, Dr. Birch translated a papyrus, now in the ​British Museum, describing a judicial inquiry concerning robberies committed in the royal tombs at Thebes. The tombs of the kings are described as having been inspected. In one of these tombs the king Antuf-ā́a is reported to be represented on a tablet accompanied by his hound Behkaa. This tomb has quite recently been discovered by M. Mariette at Drah-abu'lneggah, with the picture of the king, and the dog's name Behkaa written over the picture of the animal. The inscription on the tablet is dated from the fiftieth year of the king.
Evidence like this proves that there is no exaggeration in the list of Abydos. It does not aim at presenting a complete list of kings. It only mentions those for whom Seti had a special devotion. The disappearance of Memphis and other great cities is quite sufficient to account for the absence of monumental evidence for some of the reigns. It is very probable that the earliest kings left no monuments. But for nearly every king on the tablet who is unrepresented by monumental evidence, we can produce another king omitted by the tablet, but whose reign is proved by unimpeachable evidence.
The evidence of such genealogies as are found in the tombs leads to chronological results very similar to those derived from the succession of the kings. These genealogies have nothing fabulous about them, like ​those against which Mr. Grote cautions his readers; they are as completely matter of fact as any recorded on the tombstones of our own churchyards.
A great many writers who have treated of Egyptian chronology have endeavoured to utilize the names and numbers given in the fragments of Manetho. There is not the slightest reason for questioning the fact that Manetho had access to authentic historical records; and if his work were still extant, it would be of invaluable service to us. As it is, we are indebted to him for the notion of the division into dynasties with local origins, all of which have been accurately verified. But his work has unfortunately been lost, and the few fragments of it which remain, and which give but an imperfect notion of the whole, have been preserved by writers who do not appear to have observed strict accuracy in their quotations, and they have clearly in some instances quoted him at second-hand. The late Dr. Hincks, who had given great attention to the ​subject, has pointed out a series of deliberate falsifications of Manetho's lists made by the early Christian and perhaps by Jewish chronologers for the purpose of bringing these lists into harmony with the Old Testament, or rather with fanciful interpretations of the Old Testament. He does not attribute these falsifications to dishonest motives, but to "mistakes or injudicious attempts to correct mistakes."
It was once generally supposed (and I have myself written in favour of the supposition) that absolute dates might be detected on the monuments. The heliacal risings of certain stars we calculated by M. Biot as fixing the reign of one king in 1300 B.C., and of another king in the year 1444. But I no longer believe that the Egyptian texts really bear out the interpretation which furnishes the data for these ​calculations. Dr. Dümichen, Dr. Lauth and other scholars have written in favour of other fixed dates which they believe can be determined astronomically. But whether these dates are right or wrong (and I am unwilling to express an opinion on questions which I have not personally investigated), matters but little for our present purpose. The essential point upon which I wish to insist is, that the Egyptian monarchy, according to the most moderate calculation, must have already been in existence fifteen hundred years at the very least, but probably more than two thousand years, before the book of Exodus was written.
The composition of the book of Exodus, however, cannot unfortunately be considered a fixed date. The opinion which used to be universally received, that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, must assuredly be abandoned. I am quite ready to admit that the ​co-existence in the Pentateuch of the documents called Elohistic and Jehovistic is in itself no argument against the authorship of Moses. But the fact that these documents continue to run through the book of Joshua furnishes an argument which admits of no reply. The book of Joshua and the book of Exodus are parts of one and the same work, and the historical allusions in the book of Joshua have compelled some of the commentators who pride themselves most upon their orthodoxy (Matthew Henry, for instance), to refer the authorship of it to times subsequent to the foundation of the Hebrew monarchy.
But though the book of Exodus as a whole may not be the work of a contemporary, there is really no reason for doubting the accuracy of the statement about Pithom and Rameses. Egyptian history renders it most probable that Moses was a contemporary of the great Rameses. The exodus of the Israelites cannot with any probability be brought lower down than 1310 years before Christ, and it is about 2050 before this that I would place the lowest limit for estimating the beginning of the historical Egyptian monarchy. The date of the Great Pyramid cannot be more recent than 3000 B.C.
This is undoubtedly a great and venerable antiquity, but it is after all very inferior to the antiquity of the ​human race in Egypt, as demonstrated by the operations suggested by Mr. Leonard Homer to the Royal Society, and carried out at first at its expense, and finally at the cost of Abbas Pacha, between the years 1851 and 1854. Ninety-five pits were sunk at different spots into the alluvial soil of the Nile valley. "Although," Professor Ansted tells us, "it cannot be regarded as a matter about which there is no dispute, all the evidence that exists seems to point to five inches per century as fully representing the average amount of elevation given by the Nile mud to the bed of the Nile and the surrounding country covered by the annual inundation." "The average can hardly under any calculations have exceeded five inches per century during the last several centuries, whilst from the mere effects of long-continued pressure the beds must become compact at some depth below than they are near the surface, and the rate of thickness ought to become gradually less the deeper we penetrate." In the course of the operations, remains showing the handiwork of man were brought up from considerable depths: sculptured granite, architecturally carved limestone, human and animal figures, coloured mosaic, vases, jars, a copper knife, and at very great depths—fifty, sixty, or even seventy-two feet—bricks and fragments of pottery. At thirty-three feet and a half, a tablet with ​inscriptions was found. There is not a single geologist who does not at once infer from these facts an enormous lapse of time during which the human race must have inhabited Egypt. Geologists are not more deficient in common sense than other men, and they are quite ready to allow that accidental circumstances may have contributed to bury some articles deeper than others; and their conclusions are not drawn from this or that experiment, but from the cumulative evidence derived from nearly a hundred experiments made over a very extensive area of land.
In reply to the objection that the artificial objects might have fallen into old wells which had afterwards been filled up, Sir Charles Lyell says: "Of the ninety-five shafts and borings, seventy or more were made far from the sites of towns or villages; and allowing that every field may have had its well, there would be small chance of the borings striking upon the site even of a small number of them in seventy experiments." I remember being once asked about these operations, and when I had described them, one of my friends came up to me and said in a voice of solemn warning and protest, "If what you have been saying is true, Christianity is a mere fable." I could only reply, "No; it only shows that your conception of Christianity involves something fabulous." Whatever claim a ​religion may have to a divine authority, that claim cannot be extended to its theology, which is nothing else but a system of reasoning upon two sets of data, namely, those furnished by the religion itself, and those furnished by the science of the day. Biblical chronology as understood by Usher, Petavius or other learned men, depends not upon the Bible only, but also upon the data of profane chronology as understood in their days, and the latter chronology was built in great part upon statements of Greek and Latin writers which at the present day are known to be absolutely worthless.
The boring instruments which had to be employed at great depths in the operations of which I have been speaking, necessarily brought up everything in fragments. There is therefore no proof that the Egyptians known to us from history were descended from the pre-historic men whose existence was first brought to light by these operations. But the very proximate probability of such a descent might have suggested itself to ethnologists, who have persisted in looking for the ancestors of the Egyptians among races the very existence of which cannot be traced very far back. At all events, the view is now entirely abandoned according to which the Egyptians came down the Nile from ​the more southern regions of Africa. It has been most conclusively proved that they gradually advanced from north to south, and the earliest Ethiopian civilization is demonstrably the child, not the parent, of the Egyptian. Most scholars now point to the interior of Asia as the cradle of the Egyptian people. I will only say that the farther back we go into antiquity, the more closely does the Egyptian type approach the European. This is the opinion of Mariette Bey and of Dr. Birch, and the same opinion was most powerfully expressed by Professor Owen at the Oriental Congress held in London in 1874. In reference to one specimen. Professor Owen said: "With English costume and complexion, this Egyptian of the Ancient Empire would pass for a well-to-do sensible British citizen and ratepayer." And of another he said: "The general character of the face recalls that of the northern German; he might be the countryman of Bismarck." In reference to another hypothesis which had been proposed, he observed: "Unknown and scarce conceivable as are the conditions which could bring about the conversion of the Australian into the Egyptian type of skull, the influence of civilization and admixture would be still more impotent in blotting out the dental characteristics of the lower race. The size of crown and multiplication of fangs are reduced in the ancient Egyptian to the standard of Indo-European or so-called highly ​civilized races. The last molar has the same inferiority of size."
It is in vain, I believe, that the testimony of philology has been invoked in evidence of the origin of the Egyptians. The language which has been recovered belongs to a very early stage of speech, and is not, or at least cannot be shown to be, allied to any other known language than its descendant the Coptic. It is certainly not akin to any of the known dialects either of North or of South Africa, and the attempts which have hitherto been made towards establishing such a kindred must be considered as absolute failures. A certain number of Egyptian words, such as i, "go," tā, "give, place," have the same meaning as the corresponding Indo-European roots. And a few other Egyptian words sound very like Semitic words of the same meaning. But the total number of words in the Egyptian vocabulary which have the appearance of relationship either with the Aryan or with the Semitic stock turns out, after passing through the necessary process of sifting, to be extremely small. A ​considerable number of words have certainly passed from one language into another, but all these have to be deducted. Those who talk of Egyptian having its root in Semitic, or say that its grammar is Semitic, must mean something quite different from what these words imply in the mouth of some one well versed in the science of Language. I once heard a learned Jew compare Hebrew with Portuguese. All that he meant to say was, that it preferred the letter m where the kindred languages took n, as the Portuguese language often does in contrast with its sister languages, the Spanish, French and Italian. And those who speak of Egyptian grammar as being Semitic are clearly thinking of some peculiarities of it, in forgetfulness of very much more important ones. It would be quite easy, under such conditions, to discover Finnish or Polynesian affinities.
The Egyptian and the Semitic languages belong to quite different stages of language, the former to what Professor Max Müller calls the second or Terminational, the latter to the third or Inflexional stage. In the Terminational stage, two or more roots may coalesce to form a word, the one retaining its radical independence, the other sinking down to a mere termination. The languages belonging to this stage have generally been called agglutinative. Now the Egyptian language has indeed reached this stage as regards the pronominal and one or two other suffixes. But in all other respects it most nearly resembles the languages of the first or ​Radical stage, in which there is no formal distinction between a root and a word. The agglutination between an Egyptian word and its pronominal suffix is of the lightest possible kind; a particle may, and often does, intervene between them. A recent critic reviewing Rossi's Grammar a few weeks ago, preferred that of Brugsch's to it in consequence of the paradigms of verbs which are to be found in the latter. He might with equal wisdom have found fault with both for omitting the declensions. My own criticism would have been very different. There is, I believe, too much paradigm in Rossi's Grammar. There are no paradigms at all in Egyptian; and those who have inserted such things into their Grammars (I say it with the utmost deference to such admirable scholars as E. de Rougé and Brugsch) have been led astray by their efforts to find in Egyptian what exists in other languages. But each kind of language has its own processes. Hebrew and Arabic verbs can as little be thrown into moods and tenses corresponding to the Greek or Latin verbs, as you can find Pual or Hithpahel forms in French or English. Personal endings are indispensable to the Indo-European and to the Semitic verbs. The Egyptian verb is unchangeable, and has no personal ending properly speaking. The suffix which is sometimes added to it is not really a personal ending. It is put instead of a subject; and when the subject is expressed, the pronominal suffix is and must be omitted. It would ​be as impossible in Hebrew, or in any other Semitic language, to suppress the personal ending, which is an essential part of the word in which it occurs.
One of the chief differences between the Egyptian language on the one hand and the Indo-European and Semitic on the other, is, that the distinctions between roots, stems and words, can hardly be said to exist at all in the former. The bare root, which in the languages of the third stage lies, as it were, below the surface, and is only revealed by its developments to scientific inquiry, is almost invariably identical in Egyptian with the word in actual use. From one Aryan or Semitic root, which is itself no part of speech and has but an abstract existence, verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech, are derived. The actual Egyptian word, taken by itself, is in very many instances no part of speech, but within the limits of the notion which it represents is potentially noun, verb, adjective, adverb, &c. The notion expressed by an Egyptian word is only determined, as that of a verb in the strict sense (verbum finitum), by the presence of a subject. When no subject (that is, noun or pronoun) is expressed, we may indeed have a "verbum infinitum," but this is grammatically a noun or an adjective. How can a language of this description be called Semitic in its grammar?
There are three different ways in which a verb may be connected with its subject, but these are wholly ​irrespective of time or mood, so that grammarians who have introduced these forms into their paradigms call them "Present-Past-Future," first, second or third. They might add, "Indicative-Potential-Conjunctive," and so forth. The Egyptian verb is often accompanied by an auxiliary, and is grammatically subordinate to it; and the combinations formed by these auxiliary words with the verbal notion enable the language to express meanings equivalent to those expressed by our Indo-European tenses and moods. But this is very different from what is meant by paradigm.
I have just spoken of the grammatical subordination of a verb to its auxiliary. This is almost the only kind of grammatical subordination which exists in the language, and the consequence of it is fatal to anything like beauty of construction in the form of the sentences. It seems unfair to judge of the capabilities of a language of which almost the entire literature has perished. How could we judge of the capabilities of the Greek language had all its poetry and oratory been lost, and nothing remained but its inscriptions? Yet enough remains to show what the structure of the Egyptian sentences must necessarily have been; we possess several narratives of considerable length and of different dates, a great many hymns, and the heroic poem of Pentaur, which was considered sufficiently important to be engraved on the walls of at least four temples—Abydos, Luqsor, Karnak and Ipsambul—at one of the ​periods of the greatest glory of Egypt. It is evident that prose sentences like those of Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero or Burke, or poetical ones like those of Sophocles, Euripides or Horace (not to mention any other names), are as impossible in Egyptian as they are in Hebrew or Arabic. Whatever beauty there is in Egyptian composition (and there often is considerable beauty) is derived either from the thought itself or from the simplicity of the expression, not from the artistic variety or structure of its periods. M. Renan has made very similar remarks upon the structure of the Semitic sentence (which, however, admits of much greater variety than the Egyptian, and does not suffer in narratives from the perpetual repetition of the same auxiliary verb), and he has inferred from it the inferiority of the Semitic mind to the European with reference to certain branches of intellectual development. I have little doubt that M. Renan is right to this extent, that certain languages as vehicles of thought are inferior to others, and that as long as men are confined to the inferior vehicle of thought, they are unable to raise themselves to the level of others who enjoy a more efficient instrument. It is difficult to conceive the Egyptians as otherwise than incapacitated by their language from profound philosophy. It is hardly ​possible to read a page written in an Indo-European language, from Sanskrit to Keltic, without coming across some kind of dialectic process of which I do not remember a single trace in an Egyptian text.
But if the Egyptian mind must be considered as inferior in some branches of intellectual development, the world of Art, not indeed in its full extent, but in many aspects, ranging from mere elegance and prettiness to real beauty and sublimity, was revealed to it at a very early period indeed. Those who know Egyptian art only through our northern museums can have no adequate conception of what it really is or was. Almost all the objects in our museums have suffered by frequent locomotion, atmospheric influences, or other deleterious causes. You should see the freshness of the articles contained in the museum at Bulaq, which seem to have just come from the hand of the artist, or inspect some of the tombs which have not yet suffered from the vandalism of the moderns, or see the magnificent temples whose ruins have as yet escaped destruction. But, even on the spot, imagination must come to our aid if the past has to be realized.
Many of us have seen the Pyramids, and, as Dean Stanley says, "One is inclined to imagine that the Pyramids are immutable, and that such as you see them ​now, such they were always. Of distant views this is true; but taking them near at hand, it is more easy from the existing ruins to conceive Karnac as it was than it is to conceive the Pyramidal platform as it was. The smooth casing of part of the top of the second Pyramid, and the magnificent granite blocks which form the lower stages of the third, serve to show what they must have been all from top to bottom; the first and second, brilliant white or yellow limestone, smooth from top to bottom, instead of those rude disjointed masses which their stripped sides now present; the third, all glowing with the red granite from the first cataract. As it is, they have the barbarous look of Stonehenge; but then they must have shone with the polish of an age already rich with civilization, and that the more remarkable when it is remembered that these granite blocks which furnish the outside of the third and inside of the first must have come all the way from the first cataract. It also seems, from Herodotus and others, that these smooth outsides were covered with sculptures. Then you must build up or uncover the massive tombs, now broken or choked up with sand, so as to restore the aspect of vast streets of tombs like those on the Appian Way, out of which the Great Pyramid would rise like a cathedral above smaller churches. Lastly, you must enclose two other Pyramids with stone precincts and gigantic gateways; and, above all, you must restore the Sphinx as he (for it ​must never be forgotten that a female Sphinx was almost unknown) was in the days of his glory."
I may perhaps appear open to the suspicion of overestimating the arts of ancient Egypt. I therefore cannot do better than refer you to the mature judgment of one who has written the History of Architecture with consummate knowledge, ability and taste.
"No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid," says Mr. Fergusson, "without being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill displayed in its construction. The immense blocks of granite brought from Syene—a distance of 500 miles—polished like glass, and so fitted that the joints can hardly be detected. Nothing can be more wonderful than the extraordinary amount of knowledge displayed in the construction of the discharging chambers over the roof of the principal apartment, in the alignment of the sloping galleries, in the provision of ventilating shafts, and in all the wonderful contrivances of the structure. All these, too, are carried out with such precision that, notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight, no settlement in any part can be detected to the extent of an appreciable fraction of an inch. Nothing more perfect, mechanically, has ever been erected since that time, and we ask ourselves in vain, how long it must have taken before men acquired such experience and such skill, or were so perfectly organized, as to contemplate and complete such undertakings."
The walls of the most ancient tombs are decorated with pictures.
"In all these pictures the men are represented with an ethnic and artistic truth that enables us easily to recognize their race and station. The animals are not only distinguishable, but the characteristic peculiarities of each species are seized with a power of generalization seldom, if ever, surpassed."
"More striking than even the paintings are the portrait statues which have recently been discovered in the secret recesses of these tombs; nothing more wonderfully truthful and realistic has been done since that time till the invention of photography, and even that can hardly represent a man with such unflattering truthfulness as these old coloured terra-cotta portraits of the sleek rich men of the Pyramid period."
I now turn to the pages describing the buildings at Thebes.
"Its principal dimensions are 1200 feet in length, by about 360 in width, and it covers therefore about 430,000 square feet, or nearly twice the area of St. Peter's at Rome, and more than four times that of any mediæval cathedral existing. This, however, is not a fair way of estimating its dimensions, for our churches are buildings entirely under one roof; but at Karnac a considerable portion of the area was uncovered by any buildings, so that no such comparison is just. The great hypostile hall, however, is internally 340 feet by 170, and with its two pylons it covers more than 88,000 square feet, a greater area than the cathedral of Cologne, the largest of all our northern cathedrals; and when we consider that this is only a part of a great whole, we may fairly assert that the ​entire structure is among the largest, as it undoubtedly is one of the most beautiful, buildings in the world.
"We have thus in this one temple a complete history of the style during the whole of its most flourishing period; and either for interest or for beauty it forms such a series as no other country and no other age can produce. Besides those buildings mentioned above, there are other temples to the North, to the East, and more especially to the South, and pylons connecting them, and avenues of sphinxes extending for miles, and enclosing walls and tanks and embankments—making up such a group as no city ever possessed before or since. St. Peter with its colonnades and the Vatican make up an immense mass, but as insignificant in extent as in style when compared with this glory of ancient Thebes and its surrounding temples.
There is one more quotation from which I am unable to refrain,
True artistic power may display itself in a gem as well as in the design of a cathedral. The precious materials of which Egyptian jewellery was composed have naturally contributed to their destruction in former times, but there are still extant trinkets of marvellous beauty. A few years ago some peasants near Thebes dug up the coffin of the queen Aahhotep, wife of king Rāmes. This king's name is one of those which does not occur in the tablet of Abydos, but he is known from different records, and his picture is found at Qurnah in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty. Queen Aahhotep was the ancestress of this dynasty. Her coffin contained treasures of jewellery, which were brought to Paris at the last General Exhibition, and are now objects of wonder and admiration to all who visit the Museum at Bulaq. Between the linen coverings, precious weapons and ornaments were found, daggers, a golden axe, a chain with three large golden bees and a breastplate, and on the body itself a golden chain, with a scarabaeus, armlets, a fillet for the brow and other objects. Two little barks in gold and silver, bronze axes bearing the name of her husband Rāmes, and great bangles for the ankles, lay immediately upon the wood of the coffin. The jewellers of Paris could not have produced more exquisite workmanship.
​I must not omit to tell you that, to the practised eye of an archaeologist, every object of Egyptian art bears upon it as well defined a date as a mediaeval church window or porch. The astonishing identity which is visible through all the periods of Egyptian art is consistent with an immense amount of change which must exist wherever there is life. There are periods of splendour, progress and deterioration, and every age has its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius or Mariette, would at once tell you the age of a statue, inscription or manuscript, without looking at the text which actually mentions the exact date.
Painting, as understood in these later centuries, was entirely unknown to the Egyptians, though they had coloured pictures; but the harmony of colours was thoroughly understood by them, and their employment of colour in architecture or generally in decoration puts our modern efforts to shame. "They were aware" (as Sir Gardner Wilkinson says) "that for decorative purposes the primary colours should predominate, and that secondary hues should be secondary in quantity and in position; their most usual combinations were therefore blue, red and green; and a fillet of white or yellow was introduced between them to obviate that false effect which is apt to convert red and blue into purple when placed together in immediate contact. When yellow was introduced, a due proportion of black was added to balance it, and for each colour was sought its ​suitable companion; or if certain colours occasionally predominated in a part of the wall, the balance was restored by a greater quantity of others elsewhere, so that the due proportions of all were kept up, and the general effect was a perfect concord."
The earliest monuments show the use of a great variety of musical instruments—flutes, pipes, harps, guitars, lyres and tamburines—and they give representations of concerts in which human voices are combined with the sounds of several instruments. My learned friend Dr. Dümichen, himself an admirable musician, in noticing the presence not only of a monkey, but of hounds, at a concert in the tomb of Ptahhotep, is very much tempted to doubt the musical taste of that great dignitary of the fifth dynasty, and to suppose that he preferred the accompaniments of his canine friends. There is, however, I believe, reason to suppose that the picture is intended to represent dogs from the spirit-land, whose ears are no doubt attuned to the harmony of sweet sounds.
The Egyptians were not, as used on very insufficient evidence to be supposed, a sad or morose people. Their religion at least does not appear to have been "designed to make their pleasures less." The description of their ​festivals given by classical writers is fully corroborated by authentic testimony, and the national tendency, at least in the prosperous times of the monarchy, was towards excess in the exercise of conviviality. Great quantities of wine, both native and foreign, were consumed; and beer-houses, if we may judge of the frequency with which they are inveighed against in the papyri, must have been as serious a pest in the time of the great Rameses as they are in the England of the nineteenth century. The point of the story which Herodotos tells about the representation of a dead body in a coffin being carried round and shown to the guests at entertainments, lies in the final words uttered by the bearer: "Cast your eyes on this figure; after death, you yourself will resemble it; drink then, and be happy." I think it would be easy to quote English, French or German drinking-songs containing the same moral. The element of mournfulness is introduced merely for the purpose of bringing out the convivial sentiment into stronger relief. It is possible that Herodotos makes allusion to a song of which several copies or fragments of copies have reached us. It is called the Song of King Antuf—a monarch of the eleventh dynasty, whom I have already mentioned—and it says:
"Fulfil thy desire while thou livest. Put oils upon ​thy head, clothe thyself with fine linen adorned with precious metals … yield to thy desire—fulfil thy desire with thy good things whilst thou art upon earth, according to the dictation of thy heart. The day will come to thee when one hears not the voice,—when the one who is at rest hears not their voices. Feast in tranquillity; seeing that there is no one who carries his goods with him."
Another poem which has been preserved, "The Lay of the Harper," is very similar in its tone: "Let odours and oils stand before thy nostril. Let song and music be before thy face, and leave behind thee all evil cares. Mind thee of joy till cometh the day of pilgrimage, when we draw near the land which loveth silence."
It is impossible to read these scraps of poetry without being reminded of a passage in the book of Ecclesiastes, written, in the person of Solomon, by some one living in the last century of the Persian domination in Palestine. It begins: "Go thy way; eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart, for God accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy hand lack no ointment." And it ends—"for there is no work, no device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest."
​And if it be true that the Preacher in another portion of his work reminds the young man to whom he is addressing himself that for all these things God will bring him into judgment, not less true is it that the Egyptian harper also sang:
"Mind thee of the day when thou too shalt start for the land to which one goeth to return not thence. Good for thee will have been a good life; therefore be just and hate iniquity; for he who loveth what is Right shall triumph."
The triumph of Right over Wrong, of Right in speech and in action (for the same word signifies both Truth and Justice) is the burden of nine-tenths of the Egyptian texts which have come down to up. Right is represented as a goddess ruling as mistress over heaven and earth and the world beyond the grave. The gods are said to live by it. Although funereal inscriptions are less to be depended upon when they describe the virtues of the deceased than when they give the dates of his birth and death, they may at least be quoted in evidence of the rule of conduct by which actions were estimated. "We are not obliged to believe that this or that man possessed all the virtues ​which are ascribed to him, but we cannot resist the conviction that the recognized Egyptian code of morality was a very noble and refined one. "None of the Christian virtues," M. Chabas says, "is forgotten in it; piety, charity, gentleness, self-command in word and action, chastity, the protection of the weak, benevolence towards the humble, deference to superiors, respect for property in its minutest details, … all is expressed there, and in extremely good language." In confirmation of this, I will add that the translators of the Bible and of the early Christian literature, who were so often compelled to retain Greek words for which they could discover no Egyptian equivalent, found the native vocabulary amply sufficient for the expression of the most delicate notions of Christian ethics.
The following are specimens of the praises which are put into the mouth of departed worthies:
"Not a little child did I injure. Not a widow did I oppress. Not a herdsman did I ill-treat. There was no beggar in my days; no one starved in my time. And when the years of famine came, I ploughed all the lands of the province to its northern and southern boundaries, feeding its inhabitants and providing their food. There was no starving person in it, and I made the widow to be as though she possessed a husband."
​Of another great personage it is said that, in administering justice, "he made no distinction between a stranger and those known to him. He was the other of the weak, the support of him who had no mother. Feared by the ill-doer, he protected the poor; he was the avenger of those whom a more powerful one had deprived of property. He was the husband of the widow, the refuge of the orphan."
It is said of another that he was "the protector of the humble, a palm of abundance to the destitute, food to the hungry and the poor, largeness of hand to the weak;" and another passage implies that his wisdom was at the service of those who were ignorant.
The tablet of Beka, now at Turin, thus describes the deceased:
"I was just and true without malice, placing God in my heart and quick in discerning his will. I have come to the city of those who dwell in eternity. I have done good upon earth; I have done no wrong; I have done no crime; I have approved of nothing base or evil, but have taken pleasure in speaking the truth, ​for I well know the glory there is in doing this upon earth from the first action (of life) even to the tomb. … I am a Sahu who took pleasure in righteousness, conformably with the laws (hapu) of the tribunal of the two-fold Right. There is no lowly person whom I have oppressed; I have done no injury to men who honoured their gods. The sincerity and goodness which were in the heart of my father and my mother, my love [paid back] to them. Never have I outraged it in my mode of action towards them from the beginning of the time of my youth. Though great, I have acted as if I had been a little one. I have not disabled any one worthier than myself. My mouth has always been opened to utter true things, not to foment quarrels. I have repeated what I have heard just as it was told to me."
Great stress is always in these inscriptions laid upon the strictest form of veracity; as, for instance, "I have not altered a story in the telling of it." The works of charity are commonly spoken of in terms which are principally derived from the Book of the Dead.
"Doing that which is Right and hating that which is Wrong, I was bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, a refuge to him that was in want; that which I did to him, the great God hath done to me."
​"I was one who did that which was pleasing to his father and his mother; the joy of his brethren, the friend of his companions, noble-hearted to all those of his city. I gave bread to the hungry; . . . I received [travellers?] on the road; my doors were open to those who came from without, and I gave them wherewith to refresh themselves. And God hath inclined his countenance to me for what I have done; he hath given me old age upon earth, in long and pleasant duration, with any children at my feet, and sons in face of his own son."
God's reward for well-doing is again mentioned in the great inscription now at Miramar in honour of a lady who had been charitable to persons of her own sex, whether girls, wives or widows.
"My heart inclined me to the Right when I was yet a child not yet instructed as to the Right and Good. And what my heart dictated I failed not to perform. And God rewarded me for this, rejoicing me with the happiness which he has granted me for walking after his way."
We are acquainted with several collections of Precepts and Maxims on the conduct of life. Such are the Maxims of Ptahhotep contained in the Prisse Papyrus, the Instructions of Amenemhāt, and the ​Maxims of Ani; and fragments of other important works are preserved in the Museums of Paris, Leyden and St, Petersburg. The most venerable of them is the work of Ptahhotep, which dates from the age of the Pyramids, and yet appeals to the authority of the ancients. It is undoubtedly, as M. Chabas called it, in the title of the memorable essay in which its contents were first made known, "The most Ancient Book of the World." The manuscript at Paris which contains it was written centuries before the Hebrew lawgiver was born, but the author of the work lived as far back as the reign of king Assa Tatkarā of the fifth dynasty. This most precious and venerable relic of antiquity is as yet very imperfectly understood. Its general import is clear enough, and some of the sections are perfectly intelligible; but the philological difficulties with which it abounds will for many years, I fear, resist the efforts of the most accomplished interpreters. These books are very similar in character and tone to the book of Proverbs in our Bible. They inculcate the study of wisdom, the duty to parents and superiors, respect for property, the advantages of charitableness, ​peaceableness and content, of liberality, humility, chastity and sobriety, of truthfulness and justice; and they show the wickedness and folly of disobedience, strife, arrogance and pride, of slothfulness, intemperance, unchastity and other vices. It is only through a lamentable misunderstanding of the text that some scholars have discovered anti-religious, epicurean or sceptical expressions.
The same morality is taught in the romantic literature which sprung up at a very early period and continued to flourish down to the latest times. It is an interesting question, but one which cannot as yet be answered with certainty, whether or no the moralizing fables about animals attributed to Æsop are really of Egyptian origin? The Egyptian text of at least one of these fables is contained in a papyrus of the Leyden collection, but it is in "demotic," not in the early language of the country.
I have laid before you some of the characteristic ​features of Egyptian civilization, and I ought not to conclude without alluding to two errors, one of which may be considered as entirely obsolete among scholars, whilst the other may claim the sanction of very high authority.
As long as our information depended upon the classical Greek authors, the existence of castes among the Egyptians was admitted as certain. The error was detected as soon as the sense of the inscriptions could be made out. A very slight knowledge of the language was sufficient to demonstrate the truth to the late M. Ampère. Among ourselves, many men may be found whose ancestors have for several generations followed the same calling, either the army or the church, or some branch of industry or trade. The Egyptians were no doubt even more conservative than ourselves in this respect. But there was no impassable barrier between two professions. The son or the brother of a warrior might be a priest. It was perhaps more difficult to rise in the world than it is with us; but a man of education, a scribe, was eligible to any office, civil, military or sacerdotal, to which his talents or the chances of fortune might lead him, and nothing prevented his marriage with the daughter of a man of a different profession.
The high position occupied in ancient Egypt by the mother of the family, the "mistress of the house," is absolutely irreconcilable with the existence either of polygamy as a general practice, or of such an institution as the harîm. The plurality of wives does not appear to have been contrary to law, but it certainly was unusual. A few of the Egyptian kings had a large number of wives, but they appear in this respect to have followed foreign rather than native custom. The use of the word harem in the translation of hieroglyphic texts tends to produce an entirely erroneous conception of ancient Egyptian society. The word itself is harmless; but (to say the least) it confounds Egyptian with utterly foreign ideas, Arabian or Turkish; and when it is used to signify an establishment of concubines, I believe the translator has entirely misunderstood the Egyptian text.
* ↑ "Records of the Past," Vol. IV. p. 25.
* ↑ Ibid. Vol. VI. p. 5.
* ↑ "Records of the Past," Vol. IV. p. 7.
* ↑ Ibid. Vol. II. p. 59.
* ↑ "Geschichte der achtzehnten ägyptischen Dynastie bis zum Tode Tutmes III.," in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Bd. xxxi.
* ↑ Mariette, "La table de Saqqarah," in the Revue Archeologique, 1864, II. 169.
* ↑ It differs from the rest in "being a professedly historical document. The others may rather be compared to lists of saints in Catholic litanies. That royal names should occur in this way in the prayers of private persons, as in the tablet of Saqāra, is not wonderful, when we learn from the Book of the Dead (ch. 136, b. 14) that the pious dead are in the company of the kings of the North and of the South.
* ↑ Dümichen, "Die Sethostafel von Abydos (mit Abbildung)," in the Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1864, p. 81. Dévéria, "La nouvelle table d'Abydos, comparée aux autres listes royales de l'ancienne Egypte, redigée sous les Ramessides ou antérieurement," in the Rev. Archéologique, 1865, I. 50, and Mariette, "La nouvelle table d'Abydos," Rev. Arch. 1866, I. 73.
* ↑ "Recherches sur les monuments qu'on pent attribuer aux six premières dynasties de Manethon:" Paris, 1866.
* ↑ "Records of the Past," Vol. II. p. 1.
* ↑ Of late very generally called Hashop, in simple forgetfulness of the most undisputed rules of hieroglyphic decipherment. When an error of this kind is once admitted, it is almost impossible to eradicate it.
* ↑ Commonly called Usertesen, or still more erroneously Usirtasen. Usert is a feminine noun, and sen is a pronominal suffix, in allusion to the child's parents, like ef, es and ári.
* ↑ In the Revue Archéologique of 1859. See Dr. Birch's paper "On the Tablet of Antefaa," in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. IV. p. 172.
* ↑ The funereal tablets often mention the name of the father and mother and some other near relatives of the departed. One tablet seldom goes back three or more generations. And the longest genealogy which has been recovered appears to be defective rather than otherwise. Dr. Lieblein's "Dictionnaire des noms hiéroglyphiques" contains an invaluable collection of these family records arranged in chronological order.
* ↑ On "The Earliest Epochs of Authentic Chronology," in Home and Foreign Review, 1862, p. 420. M. Biot, in his "Mémoire sur quelques dates absolues," and after him M. Romieu and Dr. Gensler, have dealt with the Egyptian calendars as if they recorded the risings of certain stars. But the text of the calendars distinctly speaks of the transits of the stars, and never of their risings. I have discussed this question in the Chronicle, 25 Jan. 1868, and in the Transactions of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, Vol. III. M. E. de Rougé has a very important "note sur quelques conditions préliminaires des calculs qu'on pent tenter sur le calendrier et les dates égyptiennes," in the Revue Archéologique, 1864, Vol. II. p. 81.
* ↑ "Die erste bis jetzt aufgefundene sichere Angabe über die Regierungszeit eines ägyptischen Königs aus dem alten Reich, welche uns durch dem medicinischen Papyrus Ebers überliefert wird:" Leipzig, 1874.
* ↑ "Aegyptische chronologie, basirt auf die vollständige Reihe der Epochen seit Bytes-Menes bis Hadrian-Antonin durch drei Sothisperioden = 4380 Jahre." See also a paper of M. Chabas, "Determination d'une date certaine dans le règne d'un roi de l'ancien empire en Egypte," in the Mémoires presentés à l'Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 1877.
* ↑ "Geological Gossip," p. 190.
* ↑ "Antiquity of Man," p. 38, 1873.
* ↑ Transactions of the Second Session of the International Congress of Orientalists, held in London, 1874, p. 355 and following. Professor Owen here discusses the doctrine put forth by Professor Huxley upon "the Geographical Distribution of the chief Modifications of Mankind," in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, Jan. 1871.
* ↑ "Histoire Générale et système comparé des langues Sémitiques," livre i. chap. i. p. 21. The whole chapter is to the point.
* ↑ "Sinai and Palestine," p. lvii.
* ↑ See also the whole fifth book of Mr. Fergusson's "Illustrated Handbook of Architecture."
* ↑ See Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," Vol. I. p. 431; Carl Engel, "Music of the Most Ancient Nations," p. 180; and Lauth, "Ueber altägyptische Musik," in the Sitzungsberichte of the Munich Academy, 3rd July, 1869.
* ↑ "Records of the Past," Vol. IV. p. 117.
* ↑ "Records of the Past," Vol. VI. p. 129.
* ↑ Eccles. ix. 7, 8, 9.
* ↑ The primitive notion implied by the word maāt seems to be the geometrical one "right," as in "right line," as opposed to χab "bent," "perverse." Maāt as a noun is the "straight rule," "canon."
* ↑ Inscriptions of Ameni, Denkm. ii. pl. 121.
* ↑ Tablet of Antuf, Louvre, c. 26. I quote from M. de Rougé's Notice des Monuments, p. 88.
* ↑ British Museum, 581. This text, of which a copy is given in Sharpe, "Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. II. p. 83, is a difficult one, and would repay a careful study.
* ↑ Published, with a translation and commentary by M. Chabas, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. V. p. 459.
* ↑ Duemichen, Kalenderinschriften, xlvi.
* ↑ Bergmann, Hieroglyphische Inschriften, pi. vi, l. 8.
* ↑ Ibid. pl. viii, ix.
* ↑ "Le plus ancien livre du monde," in the Revue Archéologique of 1857.
* ↑ M. Chabas has fully explained the nature of these difficulties in the Zeits. f. ägypt. Spr. 1870, p. 84 fol. Dr. Lauth's essay in the Sitzungsberichte of the Academy of Munich, 1869 and 1870, is very valuable, and I confess myself to be greatly indebted to it; but even the best portions of it can only be accepted provisionally.
* ↑ "Let thy face be white (i.e. enjoy thyself) whilst thou livest; has there issued from the coffin (māχera chest) one who has entered therein?" This hasty translation by Mr. Goodwin (Zeitschr. 1867, p. 95) does not deserve the success it has enjoyed, and I do not believe the author of it would have published it, had his attention been called in time to such difficulties as these: 1, the Egyptian preposition en cannot stand at the end of a sentence; 2, it never means "therein;" 3, the word māχera is never found in the sense of "coffin," but in that of "chest of provisions;" 4, the sentiment in question is absurdly out of place in the context where the words occur.
* ↑ "Des Castes dans l'ancienne Egypte," in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1848.
* ↑ Many excellent scholars have used "harem" as the translation of the Egyptian word χent. The most important passage which would justify this rendering is on the tablet of Pa-shere-en-Ptah. It is thus translated in Brugsch's Hieroglyphic Lexicon, p. 1093: "Es waren mir schöne Weiber, doch war ich bereits 43 Jahr alt ohne dass mir ein männliches Kind geboren war." I believe the passage is better understood if taken in connection with the corresponding passage on the tablet of the wife of Pa-shere-en-Ptah (Sharpe, "Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. I. pl. 4). This lady says of her husband: "I had not borne to him a male child, but daughters only." He therefore means to say: "I had handsome girls, but I was already forty-three years old before a boy was born to me." The German "Frauenzimmer," if put into hieroglyphic orthography, would admit of the very determinative sign which leads to the notion of "shutting up."