Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau
that the priests were not occupied with religion alone. They had possession, besides, of the departments of politics, law, medicine, science, and philosophy. It is curious to speculate on what must have been the division of employments among them, when we read in Herodotus how they partitioned out their art of medicine, – there being among them no general practitioners, as we should say, but physicians of the heart, the lungs, the abdomen; and oculists, dentists, etc.41 If such a subdivision was followed out through the whole range of study and practice in all professions, the priestly caste must contain within itself a sufficient diversity to preserve its enlightenment and magnanimity better than we, with our modern view of the tendencies of a system of castes, might suppose.
I have, perhaps, said enough of this ancient people to prepare for an entrance upon the study of their monuments. The other castes, and a multitude of details of personal and social condition and usage, will come before us when we turn to the sculptures and pictures. Before going on to their successors, we may call to mind the grounds which Herodotus assigns for his fulness of detail about the Pharaohs and their people. He says, »I shall enlarge further on what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is no region besides where one sees so many works which are admirable and beyond expression.«42
Beyond expression indeed are those great works. And do we not know that wherever men's works have a grandeur or beauty beyond expression the feeling which suggested and inspired them is yet more beyond expression still. O! how happy should I be if I could arouse in others by this book, as I experienced it myself from the monuments, any sense of the depth and solemnity of the IDEAS which were the foundation of the old Egyptian faith! I did not wait till I went to Egypt to remember that the faculty of Reverence is inherent in all men, and that its natural exercise is always to be sympathised with, irrespective of its objects. I did not wait till I went to Egypt to become aware that every permanent reverential observance has some great Idea at the bottom of it, and that it is our business not to deride or be shocked at the method of manifestation, but to endeavour to apprehend the Idea concerned. I vividly remember the satisfaction of ascertaining the ideas that lay at the bottom of those most barbarous South Sea Island practices of Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism. If some sympathy in conception and feeling is possible in even this lowest case, how far should we be from contempt or levity in studying the illustrations of Egyptian faith and hope which we find blazoned on works »admirable and beyond expression!« With all Men's tendency to praise the olden time, – to say that the former times are better than these, – we find that it is usually only the wisdom of their own forefathers that they extol; merely a former mode of holding and acting upon their own existing ideas. They have no such praise for the forefathers of another race, who had other ideas and acted them out differently. Instead of endeavouring to ascertain the ideas, they revile or ridicule the manifestation, which was never meant to meet their conceptions, and can never be interpreted by them. Thus we, as a society, take upon ourselves to abhor and utterly despise the »Idolatry« of the Egyptians, without asking ourselves whether we comprehend anything of the principles of Egyptian theology. The children on their stools by our firesides wonder eternally how people so clever could be so silly as to pay homage to crocodiles and cats: and their parents too often agree with them, instead of pointing out that there might be, and certainly were, reasons in the minds of Egyptians which made it a very different thing in them to cherish sacred animals from what it would be in us Everybody at home talks of the ugly and grotesque character of the Egyptians works of art: and no wonder, if they judge, with English mind and English eyes, from broken specimens in the British Museum One can only ask them to trust something to the word of travellers who have seen such works in their plenitude, in their own locality and proper connection. Probably some people in Greece were talking of the ugly and grotesque character of such Egyptian decorations as they might have heard of, while Herodotus was gazing on them on their native soil, and declaring in his own mind, as he afterwards did to the whole world, and to all time, that they were »admirable and beyond expression.« – I would ask for these considerations to be borne in mind, not only for the sake of justice to the earliest philosophers of the human race (as far as we know), but because it is impossible to appreciate the monuments – I may say impossible to see them – through any other medium than that of a teachable mind, working with a sympathising heart. If anyone hesitates to grant me this much let me ask him whether he would be willing to have the Christian religion judged of, five thousand years hence, by such a one as himself, when its existing forms shall have been long forgotten and its eternal principles shall be expanded in some yet unknown mode of manifestation? Supposing oblivion to have been by that time as completely wrapped round Catholic and Protestant ritual as round the ceremonial of Egyptian worship, would a Christian be content to have his faith judged of by a careless traveller of another race, who should thrust a way among the buried pillars of our cathedral aisles and look for superstition in every recess, and idolatry in every chapel; and who, lighting upon some carved fox and goose or grinning mask, should go home and declare that Christianity was made up of what was idolatrous, unideal, and grotesque? If he is aware that in our Christianity there is much that will not appear on our cathedrals five thousand years hence, let him only remember that there maybe much that is ideal and holy in other faiths which we have not hart the opportunity of appreciating. I believe this to be the case with every faith which, from the first appearance of the human race upon our globe, has met and gratified the faculty of Reverence in any considerable number of men. If I did not believe this with regard to the religion and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, I must have looked at them merely as a wonderful show, and should certainly have visited them in vain.
Here, then, we take leave of the Pharaohs and their times; and, we may say, of their people; for the spirit of the old Egyptians was gone, and only a lifeless body was left, to be used as it pleased their conquerors. We hear of the brilliant reigns of the Ptolemies, who now succeeded to the Egyptian throne: but theirs was a Greek civilisation, which, though unquestionably derived from Egypt many centuries before, was now as essentially different from that of the old Egyptians as were the characteristics of the two nations.
We must ever observe that there was no true fusion of the minds of the two races. The Greeks learned and adopted much from the Egyptians: but the Egyptians, instead of adopting from the Greeks, died out. No new god was ever introduced into Egypt: while the Greeks, after having long before derived many of their gods from Egypt, now accommodated their deities to those of the Egyptians, and in an arbitrary and superficial way adopted the old symbols. There is every reason to believe that the priests, when employed by the Ptolemies to interpret the monuments, fitted their new and compounded ideas to the old symbols, and thus produced a theology and philosophy which any resuscitated Pharaoh would have disavowed. The Greeks took no pains to learn the Egyptian language, or to enter into the old Egyptian mind; and there is therefore endless confusion in the accounts they have given to the world of the old gods and the old monarchs of the Nile valley. To understand anything of the monuments of the times we are now entering upon, it will be necessary to bear in mind that the Ptolemies and Caesars built upon Pharaonic foundations, and in imitation of Pharaonic edifices; but necessarily with such an admixture of Greek and Roman ideas with their Egyptian conceptions as to cause a complete corruption of ancient art. It is necessary never to forget this, or we shall be perpetually misled. We may admire the temples of the Ptolemies and Caesars as much or as little as we please; but we must remember that they are not Egyptian.
Every country weak enough to need the aid of Greek mercenaries was sure to become, ere long, Greek property. It was so with Persia, and with its province, Egypt. The event was hastened by the desire of the Egyptians to be quit of their Persian masters. Alexander the Great was the conqueror, as everybody knows. He chose his time when the chief part of the Persian forces of Egypt was absent – sent to fight the Greeks in Asia Minor. When once Alexander had set foot in Pelusium, the rest was easy; for the towns opened their gates to him with joy; and he had only to march to Heliopolis and then to Memphis. He gave his countenance, as well as he knew how, to the old worship, restoring the temples and honouring the symbols of the gods at Memphis, and marching to the Oasis of Amun, to present gifts to the chief deity of the Egyptians, and to claim to be his son. It was on his way there, by the coast, that he saw in passing the harbour where Alexandria now stands, and perceived its capabilities. He ordered the improvement of the harbour, and the building of the city which would have immortalised his name, if he had