Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

FIG 29--Herdsman From a toypt rese a co an interest in everything

It was sensitive to lory, and at the same time it did not scorn to portray the peaceful life of the fields It set itself with all sincerity to interpret the erated fors and princes above and alet the ”humble and meek,” on the contrary, it frankly depicted them in their professional attitudes, with all those ineffaceable characteristics, both of face and figure which the practice of some special trade so certainly iyptian art was popular, it ht even be called democratic, but that such a phrase would sound curious when used in connection with the most absolute monarchy which the world has ever seen

This absolute power, however, does not seeenerally, to have been put in force in a hard or oppressive ents M Maspero and others who, like hiyptians, declare that they were by no means unhappy They tell us that the confidences whispered to them in the pictured tomb-houses of Sakkarah and Memphis complain of no misery, fro a few violent reigns and a few moments of national crisis The country suffered only on those comparatively rare occasions when the sceptre passed into the hands of an incapable ht only of satisfying his own ambition, and sacrificed to the day the resources of the future Egypt, with her river, her tee as she enjoyed an easy and capable adave to her princes almost without an effort all they could desire or deyptian morality that those ere powerful should treat the poor and feeble with kindness and consideration Their sepulchral inscriptions tell us that their kings and princes of the blood, their feudal lords and functionaries of every grade, made it a point of honour to observe this rule They were not content with strict justice, they practised a bountiful charity which reminds us of that which is the chief beauty of the Christian's yptians into the other world which is found upon every ives us the most simple, and at the same tiiven bread to the hungry, I have given water to the thirsty, I have clothed the nakedI have not caluthy panegyrics of which some epitaphs consist, are, in reality no more than amplifications of this theme ”As for me, I have been the staff of the old man, the nurse of the infant, the help of the distressed, a warm shelter for all ere cold in the Thebad, the bread and sustenance of the down-trodden, of whoainst the barbarians”[64] The prince Entef relates that he has ”arrested the arm of the violent, used brute force to those who used brute force, showed hauteur to the haughty, and lowered the shoulders of those who raised them up,” that he himself on the other hand, ”was a man in a thousand, wise, learned, and of a sound and truthful judg attention to the skilful and turning his back upon the ignorant,

the father of the miserable and the mother of the motherless, the terror of the cruel, the protector of the disinherited, the defender of those whose goods were coveted by er than themselves, the husband of the , the asylum of the orphan”[65]

[64] Louvre, c i Cf MASPERO, _un Gouverneur de Thebes au temps de la douzieme dynastie_

[65] Quoted by MASPERO, _Conference sur l'Histoire des aypte ancienne, d'apres les Monuments du Musee du Louvre_ (_association scientifique de France, Bulletin hebdomadaire_, No 594; _23 Mars, 1879_)

[Illustration: FIG 30--From the tomb of Menofre, at Sakkarah

(Champollion, pl 408)]

Amoni, hereditary prince of the nome of Meh, talks in the sae, I have despoiled no , nor have I repelled any labourer, I have is the serfs of him who had but five, there have been no paupers, nor has any h there have been years of scarcity, I have caused all the tillable land in Meh to be tilled, from the northern frontier to that of the south, and have ements and such provision for the people that there has been no faiven to theand to the married woreat and the sifts”[66]

[66] Translated by MASPERO (_la Grande Inscription de Beni-Hassan_ in the _Recueil de Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l'Archeologie egyptienne et assyrienne_ (t i pp

173-174))

Doubtless these laudatory self-descriptions erated in soure with the coypt formed no exception to the rule As M Maspero remarks in connection with this question, ”The reatly from the man as he thinks he is”

But we yptian realized some portion of the ideal which he set before himself If only to obtain admiration and esteem, he would practice, to a certain extent, the virtues of which he boasted Many signs coyptians of all classes possessed a large fund of tenderness and good-will The master was often both clement and charitable; the peasant, the servant, and the slave, were patient and cheerful, and that in spite of the fatigue of labours which could never enrich them In a country so favoured by nature, men had so feants that they had no experience of all that is implied by that doleful word poverty, with us The pure skies and brilliant sunshi+ne, the deep draughts of Nile water, and the moments of repose under the shadows of the sycaht with its reinvigorating breezes, were all enjoyments which the poorest could share

We need feel no surprise therefore at the vivacity hich one of the sch-Bey, protests against the corave, serious,, in a word, like the Trappists of former days Are we to believe,” he cries, ”that this h which it flows, this azure sky with its unclouded sun, produced a nation of living mummies, a race of solemn philosophers who looked upon life in this world as a burden to be shuffled off as quickly as possible? Travel over Egypt; examine the scenes painted and sculptured upon the walls of sepulchral chambers; read the inscriptions carved upon stone or traced in ink upon the rolls of papyrus, and you will find yourself compelled to yptian philosophers

Nothing could beorpeople Far fro life and a happy old age; they prayed that, 'if possible, they e of one hundred and ten' They were addicted to all kinds of pleasures They drank, they sang, they danced, they were fond of excursions into the country, where the sports of hunting and fishi+ng were specially reserved for the upper class As a natural effect of this desire for enjoyay conversation and pleasantry which was sometimes rather free, jokes and e should call chaff, were ue: even their tombs were not sacred from their desire for a jest”[67]

[67] BRUGSCH-BEY, _Histoire d'egypte_, pp 14, 15

The worst governuish this natural gaiety; it was too intimately connected with the climate and the natural conditions of the country, conditions which had never changed since the days of Menes Never were the Egyptians hly treated than under Mehemet Ali and the late viceroy; their condition was coroes in Carolina and Virginia, who, before the American civil war, laboured under the whips of their drivers, and enjoyed no more of the fruits of their own labour than as barely sufficient to keep life in their bodies

Torn from their homes and kept by force in the public works, the fellahs died in thousands; those who remained in the fields had to pay the taxes one or two years in advance; they were never out of debt, nominally, to the public treasury, and the rattan of the collector extorted fro years of plenty, up to the last coin But still laughter did not cease in Egypt! Look, for instance, at the children in the streets of Cairo who let out allop as he will, when he stops he finds his donkey-boy by his side, full of spirits and good hu behind his ”fare” he has been rains of maize tied up in a corner of his shi+rt

[Illustration: FIG 31--Water Tournament, from a tomb at Khoum-el-Ahmar (From Prisse)]

In 1862 I returned from Asia Minor in company with M Edmond Guillaume, the architect, and M Jules Delbet, the doctor, of our expedition to Ancyra We took the longest way ho shown us the museum at Boulak, wished to introduce us to his own ”Serapeuht to his house in the desert, and showed us the galleries of the toht We passed the next afternoon in inspecting those excavations in the necropolis of Sakkarah which have led to the recovery of so yptian art The works were carried on by the labour of four hundred children and youths, summoned by the _corvee_ for fifteen days at a tiypt At sunset these young labourers quitted their work and seated thees, upon the still war his provision for two or three weeks, a dry cake; those whose parents were comfortably off had also, perhaps, a leek or a raw onion But even for such _gour one Supper over, they chattered for a ti them took possession of some abandoned caves, the others stretched the to sleep they sang; they formed themselves into two choirs who alternated and answered one another, and this they kept up to an advanced hour of the night

[Illustration: FIG 32--Mariette's House]

I shall never forget the charht in the desert, nor the weird aspect of the ht upon the sea of sand Were it not that no star was reflected upon its surface, and that no ray scintillated as it does even on the calht ourselves in mid ocean Sleep came to me reluctantly While I listened to the alternate rise and fall of the chorus outside, I reflected upon how little those children required; upon the slender wants of their fathers and htly sleep with a song upon their lips I compared this easy happiness with the restless and complicated existence which we should find, at the end of a few days, in the aretted that our year of travel, our twelve months of unrestrained life in the desert or the forest, had coion and its Influence upon the Plastic Arts_

We have still to notice the profoundly religious character of Egyptian art ”The first thing that excites our surprise, e exayptian monuments which have been published in our day, is the extraordinary number of scenes of sacrifice and worshi+p which have come down to us In the collection of plates which e to conteists, we can hardly find one which does not contain the figure of so with is of a prostrate king or priest One would say that a country with so many sacred pictures and sculptures, h yptians were a devout people Either by natural tendency or by force of education, they saw God pervading the whole of their universe; they lived in Hireatness, their words of His praise, and their literature was in great part inspired by gratitude for the benefits which He showered upon them Most of their ious matters, and even in those which are ostensibly concerned only with profane subjects, e, al of one of the characters of Petronius ypt: ”This country is so thickly peopled with divinities that it is easier to find a God than a ious observances in the daily life of Egypt is clearly indicated by HERODOTUS (ii 37): ”The Egyptians,” he says, ”are very religious; they surpass all other nations in the adoration hich they regard their deities”

[69] MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne_, pp 26, 27

An exayptians is full of difficulty In discovering new papyri, in deteryptologists, the inquirer will undoubtedly do good work, and will establish facts which are sure not to lack interest and even importance; but even when documents abound and when every separate word they contain is understood, even then it is very difficult to penetrate to the root of their ht of it, I admit, by one of those efforts of inductive divination which distinguish modern research; but even then it will remain to explain the primitive and only half-understood notions of five or six thousand years ago in the philosophical vocabularies of to-day It is here that the ins We who represent the old age, or, perhaps, the prime, of humanity, think of these yptians, ere children coht of them under concrete forue and refined perhaps, but still ure larger, orous and more beautiful than mortals; the powers and attributes hich it was endoere all physical If we attempt to express their conceptions in abstract ter it to a certain extent, for exact equivalents are not to be found, and, in spite of all precautions, we give to the confused and childish ideas of ancient religion, a precision which is entirely modern