River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1879-07-10
Egypt.

Egypt, to the people of Western Europe
has been the most important of all theil
teachers Its arts, arms, cultivation, pro-
gress. have been transmitted to Greece
Italy, Germany, America. 1t is singular
ly startling to notice how thoroughly
Egyptian is much of the science and
learning Of the West. The lever that pro.
pes the infinite world of machinery, the
| water-mill, the hydraulic screw, the papy-
rus on hich 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
|
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,
Joseph found a rich and populous land,
and Moses bore away the revelation that
- as to enchain ali future generations of
men from its venerable shore. Religion,
| like science, seems to have found home
| III Egypt. Yet it is remarkable that the
Mosaic faith has borrowed nothing from
| the Egyptian superstitions, and that the
dark ferryman, the black lake, the weeping
shades of Hades, were chiefly appropriated
bv the poetic teachers of Greece and Rome
Yearly renewed and yearly threatened
with ruin, the sport of the swelling river
and Lake NyanZa, sometimes teeming
abundance, and the starved and almost
depopuIated 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 il was known that there
was time when the land of Pharaoh was
the only cultivated part of the Western
world. when ali Europe was a 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
fleurishing 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
priests, in hieroglyphies, 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. 1t has been one of the
wonderful Iabors of the present century
to unfold the mystery.
After reign of thousands Of years its
glory was decayed. Cambyses, 525 B. C.,
conquered 1t; Alexander. two INJURIES
later: the Ptolemies ruled in the halls of
Rameses; the Romans invaded and held
the realm Of Cleopatra: the Greek, the
Mosiem. followed, Crusaders, Turk, Ma
poleon in the sanguinary dream of con-
quest The isolation Of Egypt has been
invaded by a 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
tie very source Of ancient progress, thar