The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1906-07-10

Copyright in Great Britain
All Rights RcserVcr.)
We have been moving among tho
Oldest monuments reared by man. and
they make the rest Of the world seem
young. In Japan, a Buddhist temple
built 1900 years agO. impressed us
with the youthfulness of American in
stitutions; in China we were shown
temples that bad stood for twenty cen
turtles. and were told of customs and
laws even older, in India We fOund d
pagOda some $500 years old, and Wis
tied the site of a city whose founda-
tions were probably laid more than
5000 years go; but here we see the
mumlnied forms of human beings who
lived 1000 years before Christ was
born. inspect the handiWork of men
who laid doWn the ChiSel before Abra-
ham appeared upon the earth. look
upon coIors tina have withstood the
changes and detied the elements for
forty centuries and handle wheat that
grew upon the banks of the Nile long
before Joseph built the ~granaries for
Pharaoh.
pinglv on the Ongue as a treasury eX-
pert. or an insurance magnate handles
millions. They discuss dynasties hat
rose and fell when Europe was stroud
ed in darkness. before the light of his
tory daWn0d upon the Gauges and the
Yangtse; they decipher hieroglyphics
that kept their secrets for ages, and
lead one among ruins that aStOniSh by
their immensely as we'll as by the ar
tistic skill which they reveal.
Back in the misty past-in the pre-
historic periOd-there were two Egyp-
tan kingdoms. one occupying upper,
and the other lower Egypt. This was
prior to $500 b. c.. and from the stir
ring scenes engraved upon stone n
can imagine the conflicts which took
90 "a ~ p ihn will VA of tha
Nile before Menes, the earliest known
ruler, united the two Kingdoms. as
sumed the title of Lord of Both Lands.
fashioned a double crown for himself,
and adopted the lily, or lotus. and the
papyruS as symbols of his CONSOLIDATED
empire. We are probably indebted to
certain natural peculiaritics of Egypt
for the preservation of the unique evil
denceS of ancient civilization found
here. First, there is but a small area
of tillablc land stretched along the
most wonderful of rivers and guarded
on either side by a barren waste that
offers greater protection than a wall.
Second, the climate of Egypt is dry,
and there are no drCnching rains to
deface and no violent changes of tenn
pcrature to disintegrate. Third. the
temples and tOmbs are so massively
built as to discourage the vandal: and
fourth, the sands of the desert have
drifted in and concealed for Il hun
dred generations many of the most
valuable of these relics of a bygone
age.
There is such a wealth of archaeo-
logical treasures here that one scarce
~ knows where to begin or how to
condense the most important things
into the space allotted to a newspaper
article. ] shall not attempt to de-
scribe things chronologically, because
some of the temples have been added
by different kings and dynasties until
they represent the art and life of
many hundred years. The temple at
karnak. for instance, bears the i'm
press of Egypt's rulers from Thut-
mOsis to the Itameses, and from the
Rameses to the Ptolemies. a period OF
some 1000 years. and the building OF
the numerous pyramids covered ever
a longer period.
AS the tourist usually begin q trip
through Egypt with a visit TO Cairo,
he is likely to find the great Egyptian
ting Introduction to his subsequent in
Vestigatlons. Here one finds samples
museum, the Museum of Gizeh. a fit
of all the antiquities of the country
excepting the pyramids and the tenn
pies. and there are mummieS, Sar-
cophagi, statues, carvings and hero
Slyphics from these. a considerable
space is devoted to mummies. some
from the tOmbs of kings. but many o
more humble rank. The early Egyp.
ians believed that man was com
posed of several different entities
First, there was the body. and sec
ond. the double-a sort of invisibl,
form reproducing the features of tn,
body. Next came the soul. represent
ed as a human-headed bird. and the1
a spark of the divine fire. called Khu
which has been translated as 9TH,
Luminous.' 1t was to prevent the de
parture of these attending forms tina
embalming Vas resorted to. BY sus
pending the decomposition of tn
body, they thought that they coull
preserve the connection between it an,
the double. the soul and the Lumi
mons ap1 hyr nra W. n onI n}fari,n