The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-21 00:00:00

MR. CLARKSON'S SECOND LEC-
TURE ON ANCIENT EGYPT.

(From the Cambridge Advertiser.)
In furtherance of his promise Mr. Clarkson gave
a second lecture on the manners, customs, and
amusements of the ancient Egyptians, at the Town
Hall, Cambridge, on Thursday, on behalf of the
Mechanics' Institute. There were two important
omissions, which time compelled him to make in the
former lecture; one relating to agriculture, the ether
to manufactures—embracing the implements and
products of agriculture, and the tool of the artisan—
which he should now fill up. He had remarked in
his former address, and had always maintained
that Egyptian antiquarian discovery comprises fa-as
and inquiries from which the utilitarian and political
economist may derive new and necessary informa-
tion. It lays open the whole progress of early
agriculture, art, trade, and manufacture—the pro-
gress from serfdom to freedom—the origin of judi-
cial institutions, colonisation, and taxation—of' the
corn-laws—of the first division of the land, and of a
single land-tax a tax of 20 per cent. (a tax recom-
mended by political economists as the best), appro-
priated to all the purposes of government. The sub
ject opens out new and momentous views of early
history—(or rather creates a new volume of history,
and necessitates the introduction of a new element in
the ground-work of education)—fills up vast chasms
in the invention and progress of art and science, and
embraces perspicuous views of the foundation, the de-
velopment, the progressive tendencies, and, conse-
quently, the ultimate destinies of political society.
It is but recently that a conviction of the truth of
these propositions had reached the public mind; but
the conviction was daily acquiring new force, and the
exciting attraction of the subject was now proved by
its growing popularity. A singular proof of its close
connexion with the political economy, and corrobora-
tion of his argument, was just put into his hands ;
the organ of the Anti Corn-law body of political
economists (the League paper) having last week
founded a discussion •of Egyptian agriculture with
wood-cuts, derived from Rosselini's illustrations
before them, and promising next week a similar
review of Egyptian manufacture. These were the
two points to which he had promised briefly to call
their attention previous to a survey of the 18th
dynasty of Egyptian Sovereigns, which would com-
plete his view of Egyptian society, and terminate
his course of two lectures. Mr. Clarkson then
threw a rapid glance over the agriculture of the
ancient Egyptians, exhibiting large drawings of
the various agricultural implements, and exhibiting
illustrated scenes on a large scale, copied from the
Theban tombs of ploughing, hoeing, sowing, reap-
ing, carrying, and storing the harvest. The writer
in the League had made three mistakes in a short
passage, which was perfectly excusable, considering
the novelty of the subject to ordinary political
writers. He asserted that the wheat was not
stacked in sheaves—that gleaning was not allowed
—and that the agricultural labourer toiled in
melancholy slavery, and was denied all amusements
and enjoyments. There is no evidence like that which
is submitted to the eye; and Mr. Clarkson produced
numerous evidences that gleaning was allowed—that
the corn sheaves were stacked—and that the pro-
prietor rewarded his labourers with liquor-e-en-
couraged their pastimes (as Homer describes on the
shield of Achilles), and that our harvest-home revels
and songs (an Egyptian harvest-home song, probably
with musical notes, is extant) were derived from
theirs. Some of those pastoral and agricultural scenes
exhibited by the lecturer were calculated to remind
the audience of Thomson's Palmmon and Lavinia, and
of Boaz and Ruth.
From agriculture, Mr. Clarkson proceeded to an
exhibition of ancient trade and manufacture, com-
menting on them, with numerous large illustrations,
which he produced, as he proceeded. Volumes of
written detail would not give us so complete an in-
sight into the Egyptian workshop, laboratory, or
manufactory, as those plates. Every process of art
and manufacture then known is elaborately and
minutely laid open. The shops of the Egyptian fish-
mongers and poulterers in the act of buying and
selling, plucking, trussing, scaling, and salting, are
also exhibited. The mode of making shoes, and of
blowing glass, of staining leather, and the whole
business of the linendraper and tailor are brought
before our eyes. The fuller, dyer, and currier, are
exhibited in their daily craft. e see the potter
with the " potter's wheel" in the act of making his
vases—the turner in the act of modelling his wood—
the coachmaker in manufacturing all the details of
the splendid chariots of the Egyptian aristocracy.
The whole process of wine-making from training
the vines on trellises and gathering grapes, to the
stage of pressing them in the wine press, and storing
the wine in amphovre during and after fermentation,
is accurately exhibited, and the most minute details
respecting the process of " treading the wine press,"
to which reference is so often made in the Scrip-
tures, are brought in the same obvious manner before
our eyes. The Scriptural "corn floor" is exhibited
with the same vivid accuracy.
There is a subject connected with the extensive
trade of pottery and brickmaking in Egypt which
demands attention. Mr. Clarkson exhibited an illus-
tration wherein the Jews are represented making
bricks with straw, under a taskmaster, in Egypt.
Subsequently, they appear as warriors, either incor-
porated in the Egyptian army, or warring against the
Pharoahs. In the tomb of Petamon Osiri, opened by
Belzoni, they appear as types of the Caucassian
family of the human race. Their last appearance is
in the person of Rehoboam, King of Judah, at Kar-
neck. Their first appearance, however, on the monu-
ments, is most remarkable, as bearing the most
startling evidence to the truth of the Mosaic record.
A grand ta'deau, of which Mr. 'Clarkson exhibited
copies on a large scale, has been recently discovered
on an excavated tomb at Beni Hassan, of an Egyp.
tian governor of Goshen (the Wadi Tomylat), a
" Royal Scribe" (so called in the inscription) or
secretary of state, whose name, phonetically, is
read " Yoseptha," or " Noseptha," is introducing to
the Viceroy of Osirtesen (who reigned in On in
1897, and was therefore contemporary with Joseph),
ten Hebrew brothers (clearly identified as such) with
one lad and their wives, amounting to thirty-seven
persons. The Secretary of State, Yoseptha, produces
a decree of the reigning Pharoah, in which is recorded
the arrival of these strangers across the Syrian
desert, in the sixth year of Osirtesen. They bring
with them Syrian presents, the gazelle and ibex of
Judea. They are called " bond slaves" after the
Chinese fashion, but they are well armed. One is
playing on a lyre—one bears a royal pedum, or
sceptre—and one carries the Jewish cow-horn trum-
pet—all marks of triumph and rejoicing rather than
of bond slavery. Two carry the desert water-
bottles, slung over their .shoulders, and accompany-
ing asses carry. the large water-bottles, now borne
by those animals in crossing the desert between
Egypt and Syria. Few persons, on inspecting the
tableau, will doubt that it is a pictorial repre-
sentation of the first colonisation of. the Jews in
Egypt—of the arrival of the " lad " Benjamin, with
his brothers, to be introduced to the Vizier, their
brother Joseph, to redeem Simeon, who was, in fact,
in "bond" till their return, under a gaoler, as re-
corded in this most striking illustration, and to enter
on the possession of the land of Rameses, where the
picture is located.
Time would fail, said Mr. Clarkson, were I to at-
tempt to lead you seriatim through the whole details
of the magic lantern of trades and manufactures here
exhibited. To the trades naturally follow the Weis
therein used. Many of them resemble entirely those
used in modern times. The mallet, the bent and
straight chisel, the saw, the axe, the adze, the centre-
bit, the gimlet, the awl, the file, the wimble, the
lathe, the trowel, the leather-slice, &c., &c., come
under this description. The common saw resembles
precisely the modern. The shuttle, the distaff, and
the spindle, resemble entirely those which were used
before the ate improvements in machinery.
At the various institutions, metropolitan and su-
burban, where he had lectured during the last ten
years, Mr. Clarkson said that the tools and imple-
ments of manufacture and agriculture and the deve-
lopement of trade, had been considered specially fitted
for Mechanics' Institutes, and the exclusive novelty
of the subject was certainly equal to its appropriate-
ness ; the Egyptian room at the British Museum con-
taining the tools, being only recently opened, and
the great Tuscan Commission's work, representing
the tools illustrated before them, not being attainable
in Cambridge, and one copy only being at the Bri-
tish Museum.

Many of the implements are painted yellow, or
copper colour, in the illustrations. The saw is
generally painted red, and was most probably made
of copper. There are many tools of the same de-
scription, made of copper and brass, preserved in the
Egyptian room of the British Museum. They are
elastic, do not oxydize, and cut the hardest granite.
The chemical knowledge displayed in the fabrication
of the tools was equalled by the chemical knowledge
evinced by the artisan, the tradesman, and the manu-
facturer. The " fine linen " manufacturers employed
540 threads to the inch in the warp to 110 in the
warp; the famous Dacca muslin looms being only
100 to 84. They employed metallic oxydes, vegetable
and mineral dyes, both substantive and adjective, and
acetates of iron and of alum. The dyers use the saf-
frum indicum, the carthamus tinctorius, and the re-
seda luteola. The tanners had (vial chemical skill.
It appears from remnants of leather found in the
tombs, that they employed the bark of acacia in tan-
ning, and the periplaca secamora, which grows near
the Red Sea. The painters employed vegetable ex.
tracts and mineral oxydes, and the relics of glass ex-
tant or attested, prove an equal chemical knowledge
among the glass-blowers. The emerald hue which
they gave to glass appears from chemical analysis to
be imparted by oxyde of copper, and the reds used
in ornaments, imitating rubies, appear to have been
derived from minium. They must have used oxyde