Importance of Egyptian Antiquities-Egypt an old Coun- try in the Infant Age of Greece-Thebes famous in the Days of Homer-Learning and Science of Europe de- rived from Egypt through Phenicia and Greece-In- quiry into the Source of Egyptian Learning and Civili- zation-The early Improvement of Nubia and Abyssi- nia-Resemblance between the Religion, the Symbols, and Architecture of India and of Egypt-Anecdote of the Sepoys in British Army-Remarks on the Temples in both Countries-A similar Resemblance between the Egyptians and Chinese-All primitive Tribes derived their Knowledge from the same Source-Institution of Castes in Egypt and India-Statements of Herodotus and Diodorus on that Subject-Probability that Civili- zation and the Arts descended the Nile-Contrast be- tween their advanced Knowledge and their debased Wor- A Relatively to the various tribes who, at successive eras, have founded states westward of the Black Sea and the Syrian Desert, it has been universally regarded as the cradle of science, as well as the first seat of regular government; and hence we find that even the polished nations of modern Europe are accustomed to ascribe the rudiments of their literature and arts to the ingenious people who, at a period beyond the records of civil history, occupied the banks of the Nile. It is, no doubt, extremely difficult to construct, out of the scanty materials which have reached our times, a chain of narrative so complete and satisfactory as to connect, without the absence of some essential links, the present with the past, and to enable us to derive an explanation of what we see from a competent knowledge of what we are told has been. Between the immediate successors of Menes, twenty centuries before the Christian era, and the delegated rule which now directs the affairs of Egypt, there is a wide gulf, through which neither the boldest archæologist has yet been able to establish a path, nor the eye of history to direct its vision. It requires even a great effort of imagination to combine the ideas of that magnificence and power which must have distinguished the epoch when Thebes was built, and the splendid monuments of her kings were erected, with the facts which meet the view of the traveller in our own days, amid the desolations of Karnac and the ruins of Luxor. The land of the Pharaohs, in truth, was an old country in the infant age of Greece. The earliest writers of Europe described its grandeur as having already reached its consummation, and even as begin ning to pass away; while the philosophers and historians who crossed the Mediterranean in search of knowledge, were astonished at the proofs of an antiquity which surpassed all their notions of recorded time, and at the tokens of a wisdom, genius, and opulence, of which they could hardly hope that their countrymen would believe the description. In the days of Homer the capital of the Thebaid, with its hundred gates and its vast population, was a subject of wonder and of the most exalted panegyric, an effect which we should at once attribute to the exaggeration of the poet, were it not that the remains which, even after the lapse of three thousand years, continue to resist the injuries of the atmosphere and of barbarism, bear evidence to a still greater magnificence than is recorded in the pages of the Odyssey. While the nations which at present make the greatest figure in the world, and influence most deeply the condition of human nature, had not yet passed through the first stage of social life, the inhabitants of Thebes and of Memphis had made a vast progress in civilization, and were even found gratifying a learned curiosity by inquiries into the constitution of the universe, and into the laws which regulate the movements of the heavenly bodies. Nor was it only the learning and mythological doctrines which characterized the brightest periods of Greece and Rome that were borrowed from the Egyptians. On the contrary, we can trace to the same source those more valuable sciences which exercised the talents of the most ancient and renowned among European sages. Pythagoras submitted to study the elements of mathematics in the schools of the priests; while Hecatæus and Herodotus col lected the materials of history among the same class of men, who had carefully preserved the knowledge of former generations. The Greeks, it has been frequently remarked, were the only nation in Europe who had any pretensions to antiquity. But the wisest even among that ambitious people considered themselves as of yesterday compared to the Egyptians. Plato confessed that his countrymen had no memorial of any event beyond a thousand, or at most two thousand years before his own time; whereas, in the days of Moses, the wisdom of Egypt had already become proverbial, and that, too, among the Syrian tribes who bordered upon the original seats of primeval knowledge. Phenicia, which appears to have set the first example of commercial intercourse to the rude colonies on the northern shores of the great sea, proved the medium through which the learning, the laws, and the religion of the Nile were conveyed to the ancestors of those brave and ingenious nations who have since associated an imperishable fame with the memory of Athens and Lacedemon. The names of Cadmus, Cecrops, and Danaus, continue to represent those missions or voluntary migrations which, at a remote period, transported from Africa to Europe the treasures of oriental wisdom. It has long been an object of inquiry among scholars to discover the channel through which civilization, science, and an acquaintance with the liberal arts, first reached the valley which is watered by the Nile. Without analyzing the numerous hypotheses which have been successively formed and abandoned, or repeating the various conjectures which have, age after age, amused the ingenuity of the learned, we shall state, at once, as the most probable of the opinions that have been entertained on this subject, that the stream of knowledge accompanied the progress of commerce along the banks of those great rivers which fall into the Persian Gulf, and thence along the coast of Arabia to the shores of the Red Sea. There is the best reason to believe that those passes or lateral defiles, which connect the sea just named with the river of Egypt, witnessed the earliest migration of colonists from Asia; who, in the pursuits of commerce, or in search of more fertile lands, or of mountains enriched with gold, found their way into Nubia and Abyssinia. Meantime, it is probable, a similar current set eastward across the mouths of the Indus, carrying arts and institutions of a corresponding character into the countries which stretch from that river to the great peninsula of Hindoostan. The most obvious confirmation of the opinion now stated may be drawn from the striking resemblance which is known to subsist between the usages, the superstitions, the arts, and the mythology of the ancient inhabitants of Western India, and those of the first settlers on the Upper Nile. The temples of Nubia, for example, exhibit the same features, whether as to the style of architecture or the form of worship which must have been practised in them, with the similar buildings which have been recently examined in the neighbourhood of Bombay. In both cases they consist of vast excavations hewn out in the solid body of a hill or mountain, and are decorated with huge figures which indicate the same powers of nature, or serve as emblems to denote the same qualities in the ruling spirits of the universe. |