The Canton advocate. [volume] (Canton, D.T. [S.D.]) 1877-1897, 1879-07-10
Egypt.

ElearnlnS1 % tFc " est. lHe leNcl llal Pio-
pels the Infinite world of machinery, the
water-m the hydraulic screw, the papy-
rus on q Fch were transcribed Homer,
HerodotU, Virgil, the first germs of
painting the variation of colors-per-
Isaps th>* arts of weaving and dyeing,
sgricultt.c. architecture, ship-building,
canals, il -igation, the garden, the villa,
were initiated or adopted from Egypt in
Greece, t.c gifts TO Europe of the rich
1and that sprang up from the ceaseless
ileposits 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 Speke and
sLivingstone, 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
well be fancied that any form Of being
could burst INTO life. At least within its
borders, IN the dawn Of sacred history,
ZJoseph found a rich and populOus land
land Moses: bore away the revelation that
was to enchain ali future generations of
|men from its venerable shore. Religion,
Hike science, seems TO have found home
lin Egypt Yet it is remarkable that the
Mosaic faith has borrowed nothing from
THE Egyptian superstitions, and that the
.dark terrymdn, the black take, the weeping
Shades of Hades, were chiefly appropriated
Ebv the poetic teachers of Greece and Rome.
Yearly renewed and yearly threatened
min hn of
and Lake Nyanza, sometimes teeming
abundance, and then starved and almost
depopuIated by the angry Nile, the land
of Egypt WAS plainly the first, the earl
Test source Of til" 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 ali Europe was savage
waste, tcnintcd by the reindeer and the
EsquimauX, and the wandering shciks of
The deserts were the ancestors of Moses
and the prophets. T story of this
fffeurishing period of its history was writ
ten by Egyptian scholars on papyrus, in
Sculpture, and inscriptions on tombs,
temples, palaces, in the alphabet of the
fpriests, in hieroglyphics, and later in
fthe cursive demotic character; but no
#one was able to read it, and the extensive
1literaturc of Egypt seemed hidden in
4perpetuai night. 1t has been one of the
Wonderful labors Of the present century
! to unfold the mystery.
After IA reign of thousands of years its
#giory WAS decaycd. Cambvses, 525 B. c.,
conquered IT; Alexander. two centuries
Halter: the Ptolemics ruled in the halls of
Rameses; the Romans invaded and held
the realm Of Cleopatra; the Greek, the
tIoslems followed, Crusaders, Turk, Ma
Epoleon in the sanguinary dream Of con-
Iquest 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
|paintcd chambers, the rolls of papyrus,
the won ders 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
FOUR barbarous ancestors were only the pu
@pils of the Egyptians, that the men of
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 or a Cicero. Egyptians
built the first canal that cnt the 18th
mus OF SueZ, praclced 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 ruling
taste. The visitor when be 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 wrcaths
ans fcstoons were hung upon the walls
The dark and copper-colored race seemed
to feel the tenderness OF Shakespeare or
a Wordsworth in tie presence OF the first
blossoms Of spring. 1t is these varying
traits Of delicacy and of energy that
made the Egyptians the school-masters of
tue West,
Nothing is NOR curious tran that they
should have invented, or perhaps adopted
from the further East, most of the con-
venlences Of modern life 1t Is suggested
that India taught Egypt, Or possibly
China. But the inventions of the the
Egyptians lave nearly all an originatality
that separates them from those of other
/ lands. Their papyrus was wholly their
! own, their earliest alphabet, their litera-
ture and their painting. Shut up in their
narrow limit of fertile land along the
sacred river. repelling all close inter
course with the barbarians without, dis
tinguIshcd from them in dress. manner.
! religion, crowded together in populous
cities, the Egyptians seem to have
reached instinctively a degree of Skill in
manufactures and the arts, that was due
to long and laborious period of cutiva-
ton. For thousands of wears thev slowly
perfected their inventions. One of them
was the careful treatment of glass. They
melted 1t into bottles and vases of rare
beauty, coiOred it to resemble the emerald
and the ruby They made beautiful mo-
saics, enamels, rare combinations that even
the Venetian artists have failed to equal.
and discovered processes of coloring and
moulding that have been lost apparently
forever. Egyptian glassware was eX-
ported to all parts of the Mediterranean.
They built EnonStrous statues of ~ass,
resembling emeralds, sixty feet high;
they cut the most delicate enamels by the
aid OF lens. Mentally they were not
surpassed by the modern in the pursuit
of ideal purity; justice, verify, were the
chief virtues of the Egyptians; the CD1ef
Justice of Egypt when he sat In judg-
ment, wore on his breast a golden image
of Truth; one Egyptian king even abol-
ished capita: punishment, but seems to
have stood almost alone
Recent events have brought Egypt once
more into the circle of nations, and the
land of Pharaoh and Joseph promises to
become the pathway of the commerce of
the East Its management and safe keep
lag must fall apparently into TIE hands
OF England, and form a large part of that
extensive responsibility for the welfare of
distant countries imposed upon the Eng
llsh by the conquest of India The Anglo
Saxon race more t1an any other is inter
ested in the fate of modern Egypt; the
SueZ Canal is the outlet for the t1ade of
xISN-~ Il