The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

coasts; but when the Ionians, about the middle of the eighth century, began to enter into dangerous competition with the Phenicians, the latter seem to have succeeded in getting the Greeks excluded from Egypt, and obtaining for themselves the monopoly of the sea—a privilege which, however, they did not maintain for more than a century.[305]

      Such was ancient Egypt, the land of marvel, whose richly developed civilization lies on the threshold of historical life. Excellently furnished by nature, and placed in a peculiarly favoured land, the Copts have transferred to their own lives and civilization the grave and solemn character of their sky and their country. Their conservative feeling is directed towards fixed and unalterable order; the sons repeat the lives of their fathers, and the nation is divided into various classes and corporations, which carry on the same occupations from generation to generation. The beneficent powers of nature, the mystery of life, the life returning out of death—these are the forces and laws which the Egyptians worshipped as their good gods, whose creation is the fruitful world, who manifest themselves in good creatures, whose unchangeable nature they seemed to recognise as embodied in the instinctive and unalterable life of certain animals. The life of the nation adapts itself also to priestly rules, which operate without alteration, like the laws of nature.

      As the heart of this people was set upon the continuance of the race and occupation, on rule and law, so also was it their desire to prolong the existence of the individual. This impulse towards the preservation of self operated so strongly that the Egyptians busied themselves with the future quite as much as with the past. It was this trait in their character which caused the Egyptians to rescue their dead from corruption, and occupied the living with the construction of "eternal dwellings for the dead." This it was which made them a nation of scribes, builders, painters and sculptors. These efforts culminate in the buildings of the kings, who could command the whole powers of the land in preserving their names. The Egyptians were loath to end with death. It was the true vocation of every man worthily to build and "adorn his tomb;" and the essential object of life is—not to lose the everlasting life after death by unclean and unlawful conversation—to win a return to the divine origin of life.

      With the simple confidence of childhood, with the patient endurance of a man, and with iron perseverance, the Egyptians attempted to redeem the existence of man from destruction and decay, and rescue his life from oblivion. The power of the Egyptians exhausted itself in this toil after continuance of life. But however eager a man might be to preserve his own individuality, he loses it in the presence of his ruler, who gathers up in his own person the whole political life of the nation, and exhausts it. Like a god, or an incarnate Destiny, the Pharaoh stands in absolute supremacy over the land; "His countenance beams over Egypt as the sun;" before him all distinctions fade away, and all bow down in equal obedience. But even though the perishable was preserved, and made as lasting as the rocks of the land—though in the ceremonial, the ritual, and the rules of life the same unalterable constancy prevailed as in the laws of nature, there was still room beside fixed prescription and the will of the divine ruler for the vigorous pursuit of an industry which was not far behind that of modern Europe, for an enjoyment of life in the Oriental manner, which was not only social, but even luxurious and sensual.

      The efforts of the Egyptians to preserve themselves and their actions, and to cause their names to live in the mouths of the generations after them, have not been without a result. What the Greeks and Romans knew of their history were traditions attached to the great monuments. Before our researches the Egyptian nation has literally risen from the tomb; the pyramids tell us the history of the old monarchy, and the temples at Thebes the history of the new. Without these monuments the kings of Manetho would have remained an empty and unintelligible echo. These mountains of stone at the threshold of history, these chronicles of hieroglyphics, this nation of mummies proclaim, beyond contradiction, that nations do succeed in outliving themselves by their works, but also that their life reaches only so far as their development.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [252] Diod. 1, 90.

      [253] Thus, e.g. in the Rosetta inscription the order is given that in every temple an image is to be set up to the "god Epiphanes, the avenger of Egypt," to whom the principal deity of the temple presents the arms of victory. Three times in every day the image of Epiphanes is to be worshipped, and on the great festivals the same honours are to be paid to him as to the rest of the gods. In addition, a special festival is solemnized every year to the god Epiphanes, and a special order of priests established for him. This resolution of the collected priests was ordered to be engraved on hard stone and set up in all the temples of the first, second, and third class. The full title of Epiphanes is: "Son of Ptah, Beloved of Ammon and Ra, the Child of the Sun, the Eternal."

[254] Diod. 1, 53; Plut. "De Isid." c. 6, 9; and below, p. 211 ff.

[255] Wilkinson, "Manners and Customs," Suppl. Pl. 76; Champollion, "Lettres," p. 344 ff.

[256] In the inscriptions of the graves and sarcophagi of the Berlin Museum; cf. Ebers, "Ægypten," s. 300.

[257] What Synesius (Op. p. 94) tells us of the election of the kings is so astounding that it can hardly have been part of any plan of the priests; the whole history of Egypt contradicts an elective monarchy of such a kind. These supposed elections were said to have taken place on the Libyan mountains, near Thebes; the priests mentioned the names of the candidates for whom the votes were to be given. The votes of the prophets had the value of one hundred, those of the lower priests of twenty, of the servants of the temple of ten, and of the warrior class of one.

[258] Kalasiris was the name given by the Egyptians to a linen coat, with fringe round the thighs (Herod. 2, 81). The name Hermotybian has been derived from ἡμιτύβιον, a kind of apron.

[259] Herod. 2, 37.

[260] Diod. 1, 73, 74.

[261] Herod. 2, 37, 168.

[262] Genesis xlvii. 22, 26.

[263] Herod. 2, 109 supra, p. 143.

[264] Genesis xlvii. 24, 26.

[265] Herod. 2. 168.

[266] Genesis xlvii. 26.

[267] Even the land which the Pharaohs allotted to the temples with a tax of a fifth belonged to them in a certain sense. We have tolerably ancient records on papyrus, on which are given the incomes of the temples, with the names of the tax-payers, and the things given in taxation. When the Ptolemies ruled over Egypt the land which paid to the temples belonged actually to the temples as property, but as property revocable at will, and the kings on their side taxed the temples just as the Islamite princes are accustomed to tax their mosques. In the Rosetta inscription, under date March