Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1879-07-06
Egypt.


Egyptian is much of the science and
learning of the West. The lever that pro-
pels the infinite world of machinery, the
water-mill, he.hydraulic screw, the papy~
rus on which were transcribed Homer,
Herodotus, Virgil, the first germs of
painting-the variation of colors-per-
haps the arts of weaving and dyeing,
agriculture, architecture, ship-building,
canals, irrigation, the garden, the villa,
were initiated or adopted from Egypt in
Greece, the gifts to Europe of the rich
land that sprang up from the ceaseless
deposits of the Nile. From the central
chain Of the mountains of Africa, where
its great lakes have slept hidden for ages
until the recent discoveries Of Spoke and
Livingstone, the father of rivers has
brought down the rich soil that covers
the African desert, and made Egypt the
home of swarming and industrious pop
ulation. Amidst its rich marshes and
mud the ancients believed man first arose,
and from its boundless fertility 1t might
we'll be fancied that any form of being
could burst into life. At least within its
borders, in the dawn of sacred history
Joseph found rich and populous land
and Moses bore away the revelation that
was to enchain ali future generations OF
men from its venerable shore. Religion
like science, seems to have found home
in Egypt. Yet it is remarkable that the
Mosaic faith has borrowed nothing from
the Egyptian superstitions, and that the
dark terryman, the black lake, the weeping
shades OF Hades, were chiefly appropriated
by the poetic teachers Of Greece and Rome
Yearly renewed and yearly threatened
with ruin, the sport Of the swelling river
and Lake Nyanza, sometimes teemine
abundance, and then starved and almost
depopulated by the angry Nile, the land
OF Egypt was plainly the first, the earl
lest source Of the civilization of the West
Even before the discoveries OF Champol
lion and Young it was known that there
was time when the land of Pharaoh was
the only cultivated part of the Western
world, when all Europe was savage
waste, tenanted by the reindeer and the
Esquimaux, and the wandering shciks Of
the deserts were the ancestors of Moses
and the prophets. The story of this
fourishing period Of its history was writ
ten by Egyptian scholars on papyrus, in
sculpture, and inscri ptions on tombs
temples. palaces, in the alphabet of the
priests, in hieroglyphics, and later in
the cursive demotic character; but NO
one was able to read it, and the extensive
literature of Egypt seemed hidden in
perpetual night. It has been one Of the
wonderful labors of the present century
to unfold the mystery.
After a reign Of thousands of wears its
glory was decayed. Cambyses, 525 B. c.
conquered 1t; Alexander. two centuries
later; the Ptolemies ruled in the halls of
Rameses; the Romans invaded and held
the realm of Cleopatra; the Greek, the
Moslem, followed, Crusaders, Turk, Ma
poleon in the sanguinary dream of con-
quest. The isolation Of Egypt has been
invaded by succession of races, and the
subjects of the Pharaohs are forgotten in
their ancient seat. The long lines of
painted chambers, the rolls Of papyrus,
the wonders Of Karnac, the splendor of
Luxor, inform us, through the researches
OF the learned, that in Egypt we stand at
the very source of ancient progress, that
our barbarous ancestors were only the pu-
pills OF the Egyptians, that the men >ot
learning in Egypt taught mathematics
astronomy architecture neatness, polite
ness, grace-perhaps invented them-and
that the priests OF OSIRIS were the precur,
sors of an Everett OF a Cicero. Egyptians
built the first canal that cnt the 18th
mus OF Suez, practlced navigation, Sent
out exploring expeditions around Africa
taught the study of nature, and planned
the measurement of the globe. The love
OF nature and of flowers was their rulino
taste. TIE visitor when he entered house
was presented with bunch of flowers
the gardens teemed with them; the deli
cate lotus sent its faint fragrance every
where; at table the guests were weighed
down with chaplets Of flowers, and wreaths
ans testoons were hung upon the walls
The dark and unprecedented race seemed
to feel the tenderness OF Shakespeare NJ
a Wordsworth in the presence of the frs
blossoms of spring. It is these varying
traits of delicacy and of energy thai
made the Egyptians the school-masters O.
the West,
Nothing is NOR curious than that they
should have invented, orperhaps adopted
from the further East, most of the con
venicnces of modern life. 1t is suggested
that India taught Egypt, or possibly
China. Eut the inventions of the tn,
Egyptians have nearly all an originatality
that separates them from those of othe
lands. Their papyrus was wholly thei
own, their earliest alphabet, their litera
ture and their painting. Shut up in thei
narrow limit of fertile land along thu
sacred river, repelling all close inter
course with the barbarians without, dis
tingulshed from them in dress, manner
religion, crowded together in populou.
cities, the Egyptians seem to have
reached instinctively degree of skill il
manufactures and the arts, that was dut
to long and laborious period Of cultiva
ton. For thousands of years they slowly
perfected their Inventions. One of then
was the careful treatment of glass. The,
melted it into bottles and vases of rare
beauty, colored it to resemble the emerald
and the ruby. They made beautiful mo
sales, enamels, rare combinations that ever
the Venetian artists have failed to equal
and discovered processes of coloring ane
moulding that have been lost APPARENT,
forever. Egyptian glassware was ex
ported to all parts of the Mediterranean
They built monstrous statues of glass
resembling emeralds, sixty feet high
they cut the most delicate enamels by tn,