Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-01-02
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
BY H. G. WELLS

live under the sway of their womankind
do not sustain great empires in the face Of
the bitter hostility of the most influential
organized bodies in their realm.
Others write Of him as "a gloomy ia
matte" Matrimonial bliss is rare in the
cases of gloomy fanatics. 1t is much more
reasonable to regard him as the Pharaoh
who refused 10 be a god. 1t is not simply his
religious policy and his frank display of nat
ural affection that seem to mark strong
and very original personality. His aesthetic
ideas were his own. He refused to have
his portrait conventionalized into the Gus
tomary smooth beauty of the Pharaoh god,
and his face looks out at us across an in
terval of thirty-four centuries, man
amidst ranks Of divine insipidites.
A reign of eighteen years was not long
enough for the revolution he contemplated,
and his son-in-laW who succeeded him went
back to Thebes and made his peace with
AmmOn Ra.
To the very end of the story the diVin-
ity of the kings haunted the Egyptian mind,
and infected the thoughts Of other races.
When Alexander the Great reached Babylon,
the prestige of Bel-Marduk was already far
gone in decay, but in Egypt Ammon Ra
was still god enough to make a snob Oh
the conquering Grecian.
An Animated Idol
The priests of Ammon RAJ about the
time Of the XVIIIth or XIAth dynasty
Ccirca 400 B. CO., had set up in an oasis
of the desert a temple and oracle. Here
was an image Of the god which could
speak. move it's head and accept or reject
scrolls of inquiry. This oracle was stllI
furnishing in 1872 B. c.
The young master of the world, 1t IS
related, made a special journey to VISIT
it: he came into the sanctuary and the
image advanced out Of the darkness at the
hack to meet him. There was an impress
oI,,+o
formula as this must have been used (says
Professor Maspero): Come, son OF my
loins. who loves me so that l give tnee the
ROYALTY of Ra and the royalty OF HoruS;
i give thee valance, give thee TO holu
all countries and all religions under, tiny
feet; I give thee to strike an the p70pi00
united together with thy arm
So it was that the priests OF Egypt con-
ouered their conqueror, and an Aryan mon
arch first became a god
Stamping Out Tradition
The struggle of priest and king in emma
cannot be discussed here at any length 1t
VAS different again, as in Egypt it was dlf-
ferent from BabylOnia, but we ma the same
effort on the part of the ruler to break UP
tradition because it divides up the people,
The Chinese emperor, the "Son Of Heaven,
was himself a high priest, and his chle1 dut
was sacrifcal; in the more dlsOrderIy phases
Of Chinese history he ceases to rule anu CON
tinueS only to SaCrlhCe. me Iit6IdIy Glass
was detached from the priestly class at an
early date 1t became bureaucratic poay
serving the local kings and rulers.
That is a fundamental difference between
the history of China and any western history
While Alexander was oyerrunning western
Asia, China, under the last priest-emperors
of the Chow dynasty, was sinking into a
state of great disorder. Each province chung
TO it's separate nationality and traditions
and the Huns spread from province to prov
ince.
The King Of T'sin (who lived about eighty
wears after Alexander the Great), impressed
bv the mischief tradition was doing in the
land. resolved to destroy the entire Chinese
literature and his lsOn, Shi HWang-ti, the
first universal emperor" made strenuous
attempt to seek out and destroy all the ex-
listing classics. They vanished while he ruled,
and he ruled without tradition, and welded
China into a unity that endured for some
centuries but when he had passed, the hid
den books crept out again. China remained
united though not under his descendants,
but after civil war under a fresh dynasty,
the Han Dynasty cos B. O.. The first Han
monarch did not sustain this campaign or
Shi-Hwang-ti against the Hterati, and his
successor made his peace with them and re-
stored the texts of the classics.
Copyright, 1929