events, the first two chapters of the Book It was only in 1799 that a window was opened in the present through which the life of that remote past could be seen with something like chronological distinctness. 589 ing under the two Rameses, with whose portraits the British Museum has made us familiar. From Zoan, now buried beneath the sands, three thousand six hundred years ago, in the Israelites on an eventful night set out the reign of Maneptha I. which impressed them as they passed out of The last thing erected colossal statue of Rameses, a monothe land of bondage was probably the newly lith then erect, now lying prostrate, and weighing 887 tons. This window was the famous Rosetta Stone. M. Boussard, a French engineer, discovered, lying amidst the ruins of an old temple near Alexandria, while excavating for a fort, a smooth flat stone. It lay there as it lies now visible on their tombs. These were their The life of the ancient Egyptians is still in the British Museum. It is of black basalt, eternal houses-the others they called their about three feet seven inches long and two lodgings or hotels; they clung with the feet six wide; the side and upper part is tenacity of despair to what seemed most broken away, but what is left is more price- permanent. The living body was subject to less than any Sibylline book. It contains an inscription in three languages-(1) the pre-matter; the mummy changed not, it bore constant flux and change in the world of viously undecipherable hieroglyph; (2) the Greek; and (3) the Roman. It is a decree in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, and it was set up by the priests of Memphis in the year B.C. 195. The discovery of what constituted the name of Ptolemy in the hieroglyph led to the deciphering of all the rest. of the unknown tongue was found, and the The key archives of prehistoric Egypt were suddenly unlocked. It was like coming upon records of the world before the Flood. From that moment Egypt has been the new and allabsorbing centre of antiquarian research. Four thousand years ago Abraham was driven by famine into Egypt. It was in the early days of the shepherd kings, a hardy northern race which ruled Egypt until finally expelled by the Persians under Darius; but Abraham found there the stepped pyramid, which had then been standing for, at least, two thousand years. He found too some of those temples upon which we still gaze, and, I regret to say, scribble our names. its own rigid, physical witness to the continuous life of the spirit. The next life was to be a repetition of this. There were fields and waters beyond, and waste places of misery, and judge, and advocate, and accuser, and the long roll clearly written out of deeds much with the dead; they brought them done in the flesh. The Egyptians lived fruit and flowers and covered the sepulchral walls with life scenes. seum you can still see the rich, mellowed In the British Mureds, blues, browns, and yellows of Joseph's flocks of tame geese, wild fowl being time; frescoes of oxen ploughing, fish ponds, snared; harvesting, hunting, feasting, and tumultuous processions with dancing girls, pipe-blowers, harp-players. On the whole, 'tis the life of an industrious, wise, and happy people. The faces of the scribes, high state officials, are singularly pleasing and impressive, and some of the women very graceful and refined, with delicately clear-cut features. Three thousand seven hundred years ago bad, it manages, like the rough carvings of The drawing is often excellent, and good or Joseph was carried down to Egypt, and met our Middle Ages, to tell its tale. In the side with the shepherd kings at their zenith. He cases at the British Museum, take note of saw the ancient pile beneath which Senefreu the corn, cakes, clothes, shoes, bracelets, (5000 B.C.) still sleeps undisturbed. looked upon the sphinx, which then stood out artistic and comfortable, that we are even He elaborate rings, stools and chairs, at once so uncovered with a temple between its paws; now busy reproducing fac-similes of them he saw the mighty Chephren and Cheops pyra- for our own drawing-rooms and studios. mids shining and wholly incased in white But ransacked as have been their ancient alabaster-like marble, fragments of which we sepulchres, they have, probably, not yet shuffle into our travelling-bags and make into uttered their last word. Special tombs conpaper-weights. Three thousand six hundred and fifty years hide away with the same care that the petaining great treasure, it was the custom to ago Moses floated down the Nile in his basket, wit hides her nest, or the squirrel his hoard; and grew up amid the glories of Karnak, and as recently as 1881, in a rock niche oppoThebes, and Memphis-the oppression grow-site Thebes, 29 mummies of kings, queens, and high officers, with much treasure, now in the Museum at Bulak, were quite by chance brought to light. One coffin was that of Thotmes III., about 1400 B.C. The exquisite jewels, bracelets, gold-work and enamel found there have been carefully copied and multiplied by jewellers, and are now familiar to most students and art connoisseurs. 66 We are more familiar with some of the faces of the great Egyptians than with those of many English kings and queens. There is Shishak, 970 B.C., who favoured the rebel Jeroboam, captured Rehoboam and shattered the empire of David and Solomon. We have perfect effigies and, no doubt, speaking likenesses of certain grave and confidential officers of state and overseers of the realm. Una is now seated at the Louvre, and he is very impressive and pleasant to look upon. Amen, of whom the king's heart was full," and Nem, are to be seen in the British Museum; both have, more or less, the same characteristics. The wide brow, shapely chin, and bright vigilant eyes, denote firmness and rectitude, and general attention to business. The mouth a little protruding as though about to speak; the frame firmly knit, muscular, and well nourished: that is the type. These people were quite conscious of their own merit, and not at all shy of proclaiming it. "I was valued by his Majesty," says Una, "above all his servants. I was treasurer, scribe, most private secretary; he made me receiver of stores for his royal wife. I laboured to the utmost of my power; I wore out my shoes tramping from place to place to insure orders being carried out. I was the centre of all responsibility; the duke and governor of the South, and, moreover, devoted to the great God Osiris: all this was I, Una." We need not go to the British Museum to see and touch what Una saw and touched. The obelisk of Thotmes III., 1400 B.C., which belongs to his period, was brought to Alexandria by Cleopatra; there it lay for centuries half-buried in the sand, until, by the munificence of Sir Erasmus Wilson, after a most perilous voyage it reached our shores and may now be seen upon the Thames Embankment. The figures of the great kings, limned in colossal proportions, still stand out prominently in the sepulchral frescoes. They are seen towering in their war chariots above the pigmy races of common men whom they lead to battle like gods, or triumph over like demons. Rameses II. was the greatest of them all. His magnificent image has not only stamped itself on the walls, been carved out of huge wood blocks and immense monoliths of black basalt, but it is positively alive in the excited and graphic records which date back sixteen hundred years B.C. He came to the throne at the age of twelve, filled with more than a child's wisdom, and he reigned sixty-seven years, in which time he impressed the whole world with his power. He was the great persecutor of the Jews, and the deadly foe of Moses. Under Maneptha, his successor, was the Exodus. Although Pharaoh's armies are said to have been overthrown in the Red Sea, and his land ravaged by plagues, there are faint traces of either catastrophe in the monuments of the period; and it is probable that from the Israelitish standpoint, the escape of a body of foreign slaves, and the consequent annoyance and defeat of the local police or militia, assumed an importance and was enriched with a variety of dramatic details more imposing in the eyes of the Hebrew writers than in those of Pharaoh's annalists. To Pharaoh Rameses, this prolific race of patient toilers were chiefly useful to build his cities and his sepulchres, and he never let them out of his grip. "They built," we read, "for Pharaoh, treasure cities, Pithon and Ramses." When they got away under his successor, a source of political disquietude was certainly removed, whilst labour remained still sufficiently cheap. Rameses II., or the Great, was a warrior from his youth; he went out to battle right royally. His chariot was drawn by two splendid horses, and a pet tame lion, called Swam Kefti, ran by his side, and would spring furiously upon the foe like a bloodhound. No special correspondent from the seat of war could give us a more graphic picture of this great prince, in one of his most critical campaigns, than has been preserved for us on the monuments. Once, whilst warring in Northern Syria, he found himself fighting desperately hand-to-hand. The Syrians, swarming round, cut him off from his followers. "I was alone; my bodyguard had left me. I cried out to my great God, 'Where art thou, my Father Amen?' Now instantly inspired, I plunged into the midst of two thousand five hundred cavalry, a panic seized them-they fled-I the king hurried them, head-over-heels, into the rapid riverthe river Orontes-the king of Kheta fell down at my feet with uplifted hands." We then read how next morning Rameses reviews the troops, reproves in dignified terms the ignorance and cowardice of his officers, extols the coolness and prowess of Menna, his charioteer, and orders his faithful horses to be brought out and fed in his presence. The enthusiasm of the ancient chronicler then breaks out with something of the poetic fervour of the Hebrew poet and prophet. "As he stood erect and comely, his face was like the rising sun. He was ready to renew the fight; but there was no enemy! The vanquished King Kheta is now brought in chains. He falls prostrate at the feet of Rameses, crying, 'Better is peace than war. Slay us no more; let us be free to serve thee!' The statesmen then step forward, and, addressing the conqueror, urge clemency. "This is excellent. Let thine anger abate, O King! He who refuseth peace must needs give it !"" Whilst Rameses, still flushed with victory, is hesitating, the trembling balance is decided on the side of mercy by the beauty of a woman, and a strange and romantic bridal scene crowns a cruel and bloody war. one side are the conquered tribes "trembling On like a flock of geese," and the terrible trophies, 9,376 prisoners in chains, 42,370 severed fists, and a mighty bundle of heads. On the other side stands a girl, Nofre-Ari, the daughter of Kheta, the Syrian king, of such singular beauty that we can hardly wonder at the sudden burst of tenderness and timely mercy which followed the fury of the fight. The clean-cut features, in exquisite proportion, the straight, bright eyes, the compact and delicate figure, the unconscious simplicity and dignified grace, the pale, Syrian complexion, which makes Nofre-Ari almost European in general look these have been figured and sculptured over and over again, until Nofre-Ari is almost as well known to the artist as the Venus de Medici. On a rock temple we find these graceful words: "The lovely daughter of King Kheta stands forth to soften thine heart, O Rameses! She knows not the power of her beauty over thee. Thy name is glorious; thou art perfect in strength; thou knowest how to command, but thou obeyest none!" One last glance at the king as he must so often have appeared to the admiring eyes of Nofre-Ari. In the British Museum, amongst the few relics of the nineteenth dynasty, cir. 1650 B.C., there are none more majestic and interesting than the immense and perfect statues of Rameses II. figure standing bolt upright and kingly, with One is of wood, a the strange, placid, imperturbable look of Egyptian royalty. More striking still is the kneeling figure of black basalt, with a table of offerings. The body is strong, lithe, youthful, 591 and firmly knit; the nose is straighter than in the wooden effigy; the mouth seems about to smile; the wide brow and whole countenance beam with a genial and robust intelligence; but there is a certain flashing quickness about the sharply chiselled eye, and a look of powerful and inflexible will. Altogether, the kneeling figure-kneeling to the gods alone-is quite masterful and individual in its dignity. Before passing to the religion, let us take Egypt's past-the only fixed and stable a last glance at the stupendous memorials of points of those scenes amidst which that wonderful religion arose and flourished. Everywhere we tread upon buried cities, parably more prosperous and more civilised pointing to a time when Egypt was incomthan it is now. We pass miles of tombs, palaces, obelisks, temples, at Heliopolis, Memphis, Thebes, and Karnak. Look at 360 feet wide-its hall of assembly, one the temple of El Karnak, with its gateway suite only, consists of a hundred and thirtyfour columns, each 70 ft. high and 12 ft. thick, built about 1400 B.C. Notre-Dame would stand comfortably inside The whole of that great temple. Mark the obelisk 180 ft. high (about 1400 B.C.), the largest in the world. plain, periodically flooded by the Nile waters, Yonder, out in what is now a vast stand the statues of Memnon, 70 ft. high, raised by Amenoph III. cir. 1500 B.C. Dominating the desert, indestructible relics of the Ages, against which the waves of time seem to dash themselves almost in vain, stand the three great Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerynus. The largest one of Cheops is proudly styled the "Light of the Horizon,' the "Great," the "Chief." It is 77 ft. higher than St. Paul's, being 480 ft., and it covers thirteen acres of ground. It could just stand in Lincoln's Inn Square, and would completly fill that well-known area. years ago it towered there; five thousand Five thousand years hence it will probably tower there still. depths of the Great Pyramid, was robbed. In 820 B.C. the king's room, in the central Whether the Pyramid has yet been fully explored the world will never know until it is all pulled to pieces, and that, we may safely say, is never likely to be done. Not far from the Pyramids the mighty head of the Sphinx, world straight in the face with its insoluble disfigured but not destroyed, still looks the enigma. The face alone measures 30 ft., the paws, which have been unburied from time to time, 140 feet. The chapel between them, the altar of which is preserved in the British 592 Museum, is now completely covered in with the sand-drift. And with this passing glance at the geography, antiquities, temples, kings, statesmen, manners and customs, and the accidental connection of Egyptian history with the Bible story, I pass to a summary of the Egyptian religion itself. Strange as it may appear to those conversant with the monstrous pantheism of Egypt, the key of Egyptian religion is not pantheism but monotheism in polytheism, or the worship of the one in and through the many. The numerous triads of father, mother, and son, chief amongst which we note Osiris, Isis, and the infant Horus; the sets of local deities such as those at Thebes and Memphis, with their puzzling hosts of attendant gods-little more than impersonations of animal attributes-all these are confusing enough until, by diving into the remote past, we discover the key. That key is the triumph of the Solar or "Sun Myth." This is, in fact, the central source of all religion. It appears in the Asiatic cradle of the human race; it is carried abroad by the successive waves of emigration all over the world. The sun is observed to be the source of all life; at once the most conspicuous and the most powerful object in nature, it becomes the symbol of omnipotence, the outward and visible sign of the invisible, inward and spiritual God. This is the central authority which reduces all other symbolisms to order. The gods may be multiplied into a very Olympian rabble, which apart from this clue, defies arrangement. With the clue the mixture indeed remains, but the confusion disappears. There is nothing really but Ra, or the Sun-coal has been called bottled sunshine. The Egyptian deities, nay, all manifestations of power whatsoever, the triumphs of intelligence, the forces of nature, the energies of man, are only so many precipitations of Ra-power. The animal-headed gods are all Ra. The produce of the earth, the fertilising water of the Nile, are all Ra; the king or symbol of law and order, is one with Ra; the souls of the blessed are but emanations of Ra-they come from him and they return to him. To Him is really addressed all prayer, and the most ancient liturgies are the most direct and uncompromising confessions of this monotheism. "Thou art the only Being," "Living in Truth," "Thou art One; millions of beings proceed from Thee." Here is a fragment of this ancient Credo: "I am yesterday, to-day, and tomorrow ;" and this is the prayer : Hail, Thou great God, who concedest this hour. Father of all fathers, God of all gods, Watcher traversing eternity, the roaring of Thy voice is in the clouds, Thy breath is on the mountain tops. Heaven and earth obey Thy commands. Bringer of good, God of terrors, giver of great joy, Thou art He who fillest the granaries and carest for the poor, Thou art not graven in marble wearing the double crown; Thou art not seen by mortal eye; Thine abode is not known, no temple can hold Thee. Thy name is not spoken in heaven. Vain are all Thine images on earth. Hail to Thee, Great God!" Had this high ideal been always kept, Egyptian polytheism would have amounted Man must to little more than the saint and relic worship of Roman Catholic Christianity. use some symbols and must have some vehicle of faith and worship, and his religion is pure or impure just in proportion as what he selects as the instruments of devotion allow the soul to pass to God, or arrest it midway upon hawk-headed beasts, sacred bones, holy rags, or mystic rites. But, as everything about Egypt is peculiar and unique, so are the Egyptian gods. They occupy a point midway between the Hindoo and the Greek deities. The Buddhist gods are mere agents of Divine Power. The Greek gods are mere parodies of men. The Egyptian animalheaded god is the myth arrested half-way between the executive of deity and its human impersonation. Osiris, and Isis, and Horus, are neither human nor divine; they stand before us as the impersonated attributes of a deity, one and indivisible, "Whose abode is not known, Whom no temple can hold, Whose name is not spoken in heaven, Whose images on earth are all vain, Who is the Great God." This doctrine of an arrested myth grappling with the expression of divine attributes on one side and the phenomena of the visible creation on the other, explains the fluid and changeful conception of such beings as Osiris. Was he a man? did he suffer? did he die? were his limbs scattered? did his virtue triFor, after spending umph over death? did he rise again? The sun myth shall answer. itself for man, does not the blessed sun, pursued by the evil Set, or night, at last sink into crimson death in the west? but Isis, the white dawn, collects his scattered limbs, which are none other than the rays of light, and as Horus, he rises anew in the person of his The extended parable can be own son. carried further throughout the natural and the spiritual worlds. Sun stands for life; life in man stands for what is good in nature, or it may stand for summer; darkness stands for death; death in man stands for what is evil in nature, or it may stand for winter; but that is not the last word of the solar myth. God dies in appearance only, the sun rises again; man shall come up from death; spring shall break away victoriously from the icecold grip of winter; and thus the parable of the sun myth, fully read and interpreted, is shown to be coextensive with the phenomena of nature, the laws of the spiritual universe, and the august destinies of an immortal soul. In that strange epitome of the national religion known as the Book of the Dead, the sun myth undergoes a characteristic transformation or adaptation. The two first sections are of extreme antiquity. No funeral was complete without the rehearsal of a portion, perhaps the whole, of the book. The wrap pings of every mummy contain some part of it figured on the papyrus-leaf. Osiris there appears as the judge. Thoth, the recorder, stands by his side to write down the evidence, and Horus, the caretaker, leads the dead one by one into the presence of the judge. It is only in the 125th chapter that the dead person who has been reunited to his soul, which has "parted from its sins that it may see the divine faces," is at length brought before the judge, and begins to plead its cause thus :"Hail to you, Lords. I have come to see your glories. I know you who live by the punishment of the wicked-you the triumphant, who devour their blood; who weigh their words in the holy presence. I am not fraudulent; I do not wrong; I do not overwork my slave; I do not cause weeping; I am no murderer; I do not falsify the sacred tribute; I have not hunted wild animals in their pasturage," and so on through an interminable catalogue, reproducing the moral ideas of all civilised codes. The heart is then put into the balance and weighed. Horus takes the indicator, Thoth writes down the result, Osiris pronounces judgment, and the soul, reunited to its body, either passes into the regions of darkness and horror or into those of power and bliss, where it wanders in triumph until it reposes finally in the Elysian Fields. This coherent and, on the whole, elevated view of the after life is on a par with the pure moral philosophy of ancient Egypt. In the oldest proverbs of Ptah Hep, 3000 years B.C., we find the simplest, noblest, and most reverent tributes to the deity-"All proceeds from God;" Obey God and it will be well with thee;" "The field is given thee by God; thy treasure is grown through His gift; the XXVI-40 good son, the good wife are the gifts of God; the Nile is the gift of God." Piety, charity, self-command, respect for property-such were the characteristics of the primitive religion of Egypt. These lent their fixed majesty to the faces of the Pharaohs; these stamp with placid content the features of artisan, Nile boatmen, fowlers, fishers, herdsmen; and the same expression of integrity and ease beams out in the countenances of their rulers and the high functionaries of State. It is no part of my plan to trace the degradation of these lofty ideals, and to show how the national symbolism dragged down the deities to the level of the beasts which perish. Animal worship and the adoration of physical force must always end so. When the golden calf is set up, whether it be at Memphis or in the wilderness, the people will sit down to eat and drink, and will rise up to play; materialism and debauchery will assert their inevitable tyranny; the worship of the Creator will be lost in the worship of the creature, and the reign of scepticism will sooner or later set in. It was so in Egypt under the Ptolemies; in Israel under Ahab and Jezebel; in Rome under Nero and Domitian; in that still more materialistic Rome of Leo X.; and in the materialistic London, Paris, and New York in this nineteenth century; for wherever the votaries of science, or the apostles of the sensuous refuse to lift their eyes above the operation of the scalpel, the mechanism of matter, the thrill of the senses or the delights of form and colour, there, as of old, materialism and debauchery will assert their inevitable sway, and the reign of scepticism will sooner or later set in. In the days of the Ptolemies the spiritual element in Egyptian religion had almost disappeared, surviving only, if at all, in the magical worship of Mithras. Morality itself, at Memphis even, as at Jerusalem some three centuries later, was exchanged for rites and ceremonies, whilst vague emotions usurped the place of effectual, fervent prayer, and priests and offerings had thrust themselves between the soul and God until man came to disbelieve in both. Are we listening to a nineteenth-century agnostic or sceptic in this sad and pitiful cry from the tomb transcribed from a Ptolemaic tablet dated B.C. 300 ?-"O my brother, my spouse, cease not to eat and drink, to keep holiday as long as thou livest on earth. This is the land of heavy sleep and darkness. Here they wake no more to see their brethren. The god who is here, Death Absolute is his name." The harper also sends his message from the tomb, |