ibises, serpents, and the rest. In some cases perhaps it, was the usefulness of the animal, and in some cases its strangeness. Thus the dog and jackal devoured the carcases Fig. 6. which, if left to rot in the streets, might bring disease upon the inhabitants. The cat kept the houses free from much vermin; the ibis broke the crocodile's eggs, and lessened the number of these dangerous animals; the hooded snake (see Fig. 7) may have gained respect because it stood upright on the strong folds of its tail and seemed to wear a crown; the ox ploughed the field, and its flesh was not wanted for food, as the people for the most part lived on vegetables; and it was perhaps worshipped the more zealously to mark their quarrel with their Arab neighbours, who did not know the use of a plough, and who killed and ate the animal by whose labour the Egyptians lived. But the very strangeness of this worship shows the need Fig. 7. that we all feel for some religious belief. While no better were thought of, it was easier to fancy the bull Apis a god, than to believe that this world, with its inhabitants, had no maker, and that our wants are supplied without means more powerful than our own. But, on the other hand, the Egyptians can have had no lofty notion of the wisdom, the power, and the goodness with which the world is governed, when they found the housing and feeding these animals a help to their devotion. They also carved stone statues of men for gods, or as images of unseen gods, and built temples for their dwelling-places, and appointed priests to take care of them, without, however, neglecting the worship of the animals. The more enlightened city of Thebes alone had no sacred animal. As the people themselves ate but little meat, they did not often offer flesh in sacrifice to their gods. (18) The buildings were then much the same as those which afterwards rose in such calm and heavy grandeur. Venephres, a king of This, had already built pyramids at Fig. 8. Cochome, a town whose site is now un- Wilkinson, Thebes. called the temple of Karnak, on the east bank of the Nile; and his unornamented polygonal columns (see Fig. 9) must be looked upon as the model from which the Doric column of Greece was afterwards copied. In this reign also, or earlier, were begun the tombs of Beni-Hassan, near Antinoopolis (see Fig. 10), which are grottos tunneled into the hills, and in which the older columns are of the same polygonal form. The walls of these dark tombs are covered with coloured drawings, the works of various ages, in which the traveller, by the light of the torch in his hand, sees the trades, manufactures, and games, indeed all the employments of life, painted, as if to teach us the great moral lesson that the habits of this early people were much the same as our own, and that three or four thousand years make less change in manners than we usually fancy. Fig. 9. (19) Whether all the buildings that bear the name of Osirtesen were made in his reign may be doubtful; it is possible that some of them may have been set up in his honour by successors of a later age. Among these buildings must be mentioned the obelisk of Heliopolis, a square tapering pillar of granite upwards of sixty feet high, dug out of the quarries at Syene (see Fig. 11). It has his name and titles carved in hieroglyphics on each of the four sides. Another tapering granite needle, which may be called an obelisk, stands on the western bank of the Lake of Moris, and also bears his name. It was perhaps of use in raising and lowering the sluice gate by which part of the water of the lake was allowed to escape towards the desert. It has a round top with a notch in it, on which may have rested and turned a beam to be used as a lever (see Fig. 12). Its front and back are wider than its two sides. Its four faces do not all lean back like a true obelisk, but its face is quite upright, while its back leans more than usual, as if there had been a danger of its being pulled backward. The mechanical purpose for which this stone was cut throws a doubt upon its great age; and as its inscription is nearly the same as that on the obelisk at Heliopolis, the doubt is carried to that stone. The doubt is further strengthened by the distance to which these blocks of granite were carried by their makers from the quarries of Syene, and by our knowing of no other obelisks earlier than the reign of Thothmosis I. (20) For how many years, or rather thousands of years, this globe had already been the dwelling-place of man, and the arts of life had been growing under his inventive industry, is uncertain; we can hope to know very little of our race and its other discoveries before the invention of letters. But when the earliest remaining buildings were raised, the carved writing, by means of figures of men, animals, plants, and other natural and artificial objects, was far from new. We are left to imagine the number of centuries that must have passed since this mode of writing first came into use, when the characters were used for the objects only. The first great change in the art was to use the figures for the names of the objects, and not for the objects themselves, and thus they got a power of representing a sound or syllable; and then, VOL. I. by means of these monosyllabic sounds, they represented the names of thoughts, feelings, and actions, which cannot themselves be copied in a picture. The second great step followed upon the writers, or rather carvers, finding that twenty or thirty of these monosyllabic sounds came into use much oftener than the rest. These were vowel sounds, and vowels joined to single consonants, which, from their frequent use, were hereafter undesignedly to form an alphabet. And both these changes, each the slow growth of many centuries, must have taken place before the reign of Osirtesen I., in whose inscriptions we find some characters representing words or objects, others representing syllables, and others again representing single letters. Though the Egyptian priests had not then arrived at the beautiful simplicity of an alphabet, they must have made vast strides indeed before they wrote the word Osiris Inscript. (see Fig. 13), with two characters for the syllables Os and Iri; and again, before they spelled the name Amun (see Fig. 14), with a vowel and two consonants. Afterwards, Fig. 13. when easier characters came into use, this ornamental but slow method of writing received the name of hieroglyphics, or sacred carving. Egyptian pl. 86, 87, 88. Imm Fig. 14. (21) The power of making our thoughts known to absent friends and after ages by means of a few black marks on the paper, and of thus treasuring up the wisdom of the world, is an art so wonderful in its contrivance and so important in its results that many have thought it must have been taught to the forefathers of the human race directly from heaven. But the wise Ruler of the world seems always to employ natural means to bring about his great ends; and thus in hieroglyphics we trace some of the earliest steps by which the art of writing has risen to its present perfection. And when we think of the kind feelings and the thirst of knowledge that have been both awakened and gratified by letters, and of the power that we now enjoy in our libraries of calling before us the wise of all ages to talk to us and answer our questions, we must not forget the debt which we owe to the priests of Upper Egypt. (22) No monuments in Egypt are more interesting, and perhaps none more ancient, than the hieroglyphical names |