Part 3 (1/2)

”The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had pa.s.sed it on to other peoples of the West.”

2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE.

CLa.s.sES OF SOCIETY.--Egyptian society was divided into three great cla.s.ses, or orders,--priests, soldiers, and common people; the last embracing shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans.

The sacerdotal order consisted of high-priests, prophets, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sacred sculptors, masons, and embalmers.

They enjoyed freedom from taxation, and met the expenses of the temple services with the income of the sacred lands, which embraced one third of the soil of the country.

The priests were extremely scrupulous in the care of their persons. They bathed twice by day and twice by night, and shaved the entire body every third day. Their inner clothing was linen, woollen garments being thought unclean; their diet was plain and even abstemious, in order that, as Plutarch says, ”their bodies might sit light as possible about their souls.”

Next to the priesthood in rank and honor stood the military order. Like the priests, the soldiers formed a landed cla.s.s. They held one third of the soil of Egypt. To each soldier was given a tract of about eight acres, exempt from all taxes. They were carefully trained in their profession, and there was no more effective soldiery in ancient times than that which marched beneath the standard of the Pharaohs.

THE CHIEF DEITIES.--Attached to the chief temples of the Egyptians were colleges for the training of the sacerdotal order. These inst.i.tutions were the repositories of the wisdom of the Egyptians. This learning was open only to the initiated few.

The unity of G.o.d was the central doctrine in this private system. They gave to this Supreme Being the very same name by which he was known to the Hebrews--_Nuk Pu Nuk_, ”I am that I am.” [Footnote: ”It is evident what a new light this discovery throws on the sublime pa.s.sage in Exodus iii. 14; where Moses, whom we may suppose to have been initiated into this formula, is sent both to his people and to Pharaoh to proclaim the true G.o.d by this very t.i.tle, and to declare that the G.o.d of the highest Egyptian theology was also the G.o.d of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The case is parallel to that of Paul at Athens.”--Smith's _Ancient History of the East_, p. 196, note.] The sacred ma.n.u.scripts say, ”He is the one living and true G.o.d,... who has made all things, and was not himself made.”

The Egyptian divinities of the popular mythology were frequently grouped in triads. First in importance among these groups was that formed by Osiris, Isis (his wife and sister), and Horus, their son. The members of this triad were wors.h.i.+pped throughout Egypt.

The G.o.d Set (called Typhon by the Greek writers), the principle of evil, was the Satan of Egyptian mythology. While the good and beneficent Osiris was symbolized by the life-giving Nile, the malignant Typhon was emblemized by the terrors and barrenness of the desert.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUMMY OF A SACRED BULL. (From a photograph.)]

ANIMAL-WORs.h.i.+P.--The Egyptians regarded certain animals as emblems of the G.o.ds, and hence wors.h.i.+pped them. To kill one of these sacred animals was adjudged the greatest impiety. Persons so unfortunate as to harm one through accident were sometimes murdered by the infuriated people. The destruction of a cat in a burning building was lamented more than the loss of the property. Upon the death of a dog, every member of the family shaved his head. The scarabaeus, or beetle, was especially sacred, being considered an emblem of the sun, or of life.

Not only were various animals held sacred, as being the emblems of certain deities, but some were thought to be real G.o.ds. Thus the soul of Osiris, it was imagined, animated the body of some bull, which might be known from certain spots and markings.

Upon the death of the sacred bull, or Apis, as he was called, a great search, accompanied with loud lamentation, was made throughout the land for his successor: for, the moment the soul of Osiris departed from the dying bull, it entered a calf that moment born. The calf was always found with the proper markings; but, as Wilkinson says, the young animal had probably been put to ”much inconvenience and pain to make the marks and hair conform to his description.”

The body of the deceased Apis was carefully embalmed, and, amid funeral ceremonies of great expense and magnificence, deposited in the tomb of his predecessors. In 1851, Mariette discovered this sepulchral chamber of the sacred bulls. It is a narrow gallery, two thousand feet in length, cut in the limestone cliffs just opposite the site of ancient Memphis. A large number of the immense granite coffins, fifteen feet long and eight wide and high, have been brought to light.

Many explanations have been given to account for the existence of such a debased form of wors.h.i.+p among so cultured a people as were the ancient Egyptians. Probably the sacred animals in the later wors.h.i.+p represent an earlier stage of the Egyptian religion, just as many superst.i.tious beliefs and observances among ourselves are simply survivals from earlier and ruder times.

JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD.--Death was a great equalizer among the Egyptians.

King and peasant alike must stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris and his forty-two a.s.sessors.

This judgment of the soul in the other world was prefigured by a peculiar ordeal to which the body was subjected here. Between each chief city and the burial-place on the western edge of the valley was a sacred lake, across which the body was borne in a barge. But, before admittance to the boat, it must pa.s.s the ordeal called ”the judgment of the dead.” This was a trial before a tribunal of forty-two judges, a.s.sembled upon the sh.o.r.e of the lake. Any person could bring accusations against the deceased, false charges being guarded against by the most dreadful penalties. If it appeared that the life of the deceased had been evil, pa.s.sage to the boat was denied; and the body was either carried home in dishonor, or, in case of the poor who could not afford to care for the mummy, was interred on the sh.o.r.es of the lake. Many mummies of those refused admission to the tombs of their fathers have been dug up along these ”Stygian banks.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD: above, an ape-a.s.sessor scourges an evil soul, that has been changed into an unclean animal.]

But this ordeal of the body was only a faint symbol of the dread tribunal of Osiris before which the soul must appear in the lower world. In one scale of a balance was placed the heart of the deceased; in the other scale, an image of Justice, or Truth. The soul stands by watching the result, and, as the beam inclines, is either welcomed to the companions.h.i.+p of the good Osiris, or consigned to oblivion in the jaws of a frightful hippopotamus-headed monster, ”the devourer of evil souls.” This annihilation, however, is only the fate of those inveterately wicked.

Those respecting whom hopes of reformation may be entertained are condemned to return to earth and do penance in long cycles of lives in the bodies of various animals. This is what is known as the transmigration of souls. The kind of animals the soul should animate, and the length of its transmigrations, were determined by the nature of its sins.

TOMBS.--The Egyptians bestowed little care upon the temporary residences of the living, but the ”eternal homes” of the dead were fitted up with the most lavish expenditure of labor. These were chambers, sometimes built of brick or stone, but more usually cut in the limestone cliffs that form the western rim of the Nile valley; for that, as the land of the sunset, was conceived to be the realm of darkness and of death. The cliffs opposite the ancient Egyptian capitals are honeycombed with sepulchral cells.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRICK-MAKING IN ANCIENT EGYPT, (From Thebes.)]

In the hills back of Thebes is the so-called Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the ”Westminster Abbey of Egypt.” Here are twenty-five magnificent sepulchres. These consist of extensive rock-cut pa.s.sages and chambers richly sculptured and painted.

The subjects of the decorations of many of the tombs, particularly of the oldest, are drawn from the life and manners of the times. Thus the artist has converted for us the Egyptian necropolis into a city of the living, where the Egypt of four thousand years ago seems to pa.s.s before our eyes.

THE PYRAMIDS.--The Egyptian pyramids, the tombs of the earlier Pharaohs, are the most venerable monuments that have been preserved to us from the early world. They were almost all erected before the Twelfth Dynasty.