The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1886-04-29


The story of the Egyptian religion
proper has for its mise-en-scene the
Nile from the first cataract to the sea.
Follow its course as il flows past the
colossal stones of Thebes, the ranged
columns and obelisks of Karnak, the
temples of Luxor in Upper Egypt. and
the statues of Memphis, the city of
Cairo, the pyramids of Gizeh, and the
vast Lybian Metropolis in Lower Egypt.
The river itself reaches an average
breadth of three-quarters of mile; In
its periodical overflow it waters and
fertilizes an alluvial plain nine to ten
miles wide; beyond this, for five or ten
miles, lies the yellow drifting sand of
the desert, edged by a rocky plateau
twenty or twenty-five miles wide.
Upon this ledge are ranged the pyra-
mids, and beneath it is followed the
million-caved Metropolis of Memphis.
Beyond are seen the Lybian hills,
forming a pale blue or lilac back
ground, but flushed with yellow or
crimson in the rising and setting sun;
these are the same as they were in the
days of Cheops, or Senefreu, or Joseph,
and our eyes may still look upon what
buel StW.
Egypt has no beginning. A eau
casian race mot Shemite or negro) from
the steppes of Asia settled in the i'm
memorial past on the fertile banks of
the Nile. The cave-man became a
tent-man, and the tent-man house
man. But of these indispensable stages,
which must have ranged over vast
cycles of time, there are no traces left
in Egypt. When the capricious bulls
eye lantern of history first strikes
Egypt it falls upon an accomplished
civilization, quite as refined and COM
pick, and under certain physical as
poets even mightier than ours. Six
thousand years ago the figure OF King
Mesha stands out, ruling over people
who knew geometry, invented an UNI
surpassed system of irrigation, built
temples to the sun, pyramids to the
kings-the stepped pyramid is reckoned
to be six thousand years old-wrote i'll
hieroglyphics the sacred picture writ
ings, and possessed, at all events, the
first two chapters of the Book of the
Dead, that sacred ritual which was
infinitely elaborated later on, and
formed kind of Egyptian missal, rule
of faith, creed, and funeral service all
in one.
It was only in 1899 that window
was opened in the present through
which the life of that remote past
could be seen with something like
chronological distinctness. This win
dow was the famous Rosetta Stone.
M. Boussard, French engineer, dis
covered, lying amid the ruins of an
old temple near Alexandria, while ex-
cavating for a fort, a smooth, fiat stone.
1t lay there as it lies now in the British
Museum. 1t is of black basalt, about
three feet seven inches long and two
feet six wide; the side and upper part
is broke away, but what is left is more
priceless than any Sibylline book. 1t
contains an inscription in three Ian
guages-Q the previously undecipher-
able hieroglyph; GU the Greek; and OBJ
the Roman. 1t is decree in honor of
Ptolemy Epiphanes, and it was set up
by priests of Memphis in the year b.
c. 1875. The discovery of what con-
stituted the name of Ptolemy in the
hieroglyph led to the deciphering of all
the rest. The key of the unknown
tongue was found, and the archives of
prehistoric Egypt were suddenly un-
locked. 1t was like coming upon the
records of the world before the flood.
From that moment Egypt has been the
new and all-absorbing center of anti
quarian research.-GOOd Words.