Volume I Part 7 (2/2)
It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of this event upon the progress of Europe. An immense extension of Greek commerce by the demand for the products of the Euxine as well as of the Mediterranean was the smallest part of the advantage. As to Egypt herself, it entailed a complete change in her policy, domestic and foreign. In the former respect, the employment of the mercenaries was the cause of the entire emigration of the warrior caste, and in the latter it brought things to such a condition, that, if Egypt would continue to exist, she must become a maritime state. Her geographical position for the purposes of commerce was excellent; with the Red Sea on the east and the Mediterranean on the north, she was the natural entrepot between Asia and Europe, as was shown by the prosperity of Alexandria in later ages.
But there was a serious difficulty in the way of her becoming a naval power; no timber suitable for s.h.i.+p-building grew in the country--indeed, scarcely enough was to be found to satisfy the demands for the construction of houses and coffins for the dead. The early Egyptians, like the Hindus, had a religious dread of the sea, but their exclusiveness was, perhaps, not a little dependent on their want of material for s.h.i.+p-building. Egypt was therefore compelled to enter on a career of foreign conquest, and at all hazards possess herself of the timber-growing districts of Syria. It was this urgent necessity which led to her collisions with the Mesopotamian kings, and drew in its train of consequence the sieges, sacks, and captivities of Jerusalem, the metropolis of a little state lying directly between the contending powers, and alternately disturbed by each. Of the necessity of this course of policy in the opinion of the Egyptian kings, we can have no better proof than the fact that Psammetichus himself continued the siege of Azotus for twenty-nine years; that his son Necho reopened the ca.n.a.l between the Nile at Bubastes and the Red Sea at Suez--it was wide enough for two s.h.i.+ps to pa.s.s--and on being resisted therein by the priests, who feared that it might weaken the country strategically, attempted the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa, and actually accomplished it. In those times such expeditions were not undertaken as mere matters of curiosity.
Though this monarch also despatched investigators to ascertain the sources of the Nile, and determine the causes of its rise, it was doubtless in the hope of making such knowledge of use in a material or economical point of view, and therefore it may be supposed that the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa was undertaken upon the antic.i.p.ated or experienced failure of the advantages expected to arise from the reopening of the ca.n.a.l; for the great fleets which Necho and his father had built could not be advantageously handled unless they could be transferred as circ.u.mstances required, either by the circ.u.mnavigation or by the ca.n.a.l, from one sea to the other. The time occupied in pa.s.sing round the continent, which appears to have been three years, rendered the former method of little practical use. But the failure experienced, so far from detracting from the estimation in which we must hold those kings who could thus display such a breadth of conception and vigour of execution, must even enhance it. They resumed the policy of the conqueror Rameses II., who had many centuries before possessed the timber-growing countries, and whose engineers originally cut the ca.n.a.l from the Nile to the Red Sea, though the work cost 120,000 lives and countless treasuries of money. The ca.n.a.l of Rameses, which, in the course of so many centuries, has become filled up with sand, was thus cleaned out, as it was again in the reign of the Ptolemies, and again under the khalifs, and galleys pa.s.sed from sea to sea. The Persians, under Darius Hystaspes, also either repaired it, or, as some say, attempted a new work of the kind; but their engineering must have been very defective, for they were obliged to abandon their enterprise after carrying it as far as the bitter lakes, finding that salt water would be introduced into the Delta. The Suez mouth of the ca.n.a.l of Rameses was protected by a system of hydraulic works, to meet difficulties arising from the variable levels of the water. It was reserved for the French engineer Lesseps in the nineteenth century to cut the direct ca.n.a.l from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, an exploit which the Pharaohs and Ptolemies had considered to be impossible.
[Sidenote: Attempts of the Asiatics on the south Mediterranean sh.o.r.e.]
[Sidenote: Egypt overthrown by Cambyses.]
The Egyptian policy continued by Pharaoh Hophra, who succeeded in the capture of Sidon, brought on hostilities with the Babylonian kings, who were now thoroughly awakened to what was going on in Egypt--a collision which occasioned the expulsion of the Egyptians from Syria, and the seizure of the lower country by Nebuchadnezzar, who also took vengeance on King Zedekiah for the a.s.sistance Jerusalem had rendered to the Africans in their projects: that city was razed to the ground, the eyes of the king put out, and the people carried captive to Babylon, B.C.
568. It is a striking exemplification of the manner in which national policy will endure through changes of dynasties, that after the overthrow of Babylon by the Medes, and the transference of power to the Persians, the policy of controlling the Mediterranean was never for an instant lost sight of. Attempts were continually made, by operating alternately on the southern and northern sh.o.r.es, to push westward. The subsequent history of Rome shows what would have been the consequences of an uncontrolled possession of the Mediterranean by a great maritime power. On the occasion of a revolt of Egypt, the Persian King Cambyses so utterly crushed and desolated it, that from that day to this, though twenty-four centuries have intervened, it has never been able to recover its independence. The Persian advance on the south sh.o.r.e toward Carthage failed because of the indisposition of the Phoenicians to a.s.sist in any operations against that city. We must particularly remark that the ravaging of Egypt by Cambyses was contemporaneous with the cultivation of philosophy in the southern Italian towns--somewhat more than five hundred years before Christ.
[Sidenote: The Fall of Tyre.]
Among the incidents occurring during the struggles between the Egyptian and Babylonian kings there is one deserving to be brought into conspicuous prominence, from the importance of its consequences in European history. It was the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. So long as that city dominated in the Mediterranean, it was altogether impossible for Greek maritime power to be developed. The strength of Tyre is demonstrated by her resistance to the whole Babylonian power for thirteen years, ”until every head was bald and every shoulder peeled.”
The place was, in the end, utterly destroyed. It was made as bare as the top of a rock on which the fisherman spreads his nets. The blow thus struck at the heart of Tyrian commerce could not but be felt at the utmost extremities. ”The isles of the sea were troubled at her departure.” It was during this time that Greece fairly emerged as a Mediterranean naval power. Nor did the inhabitants of New Tyre ever recover the ancient position. Their misfortunes had given them a rival.
A re-establishment in an island on the coast was not a restoration of their supremacy. Carrying out what Greece instinctively felt to be her national policy, one of the first acts of Alexander's Asiatic campaign, two hundred and fifty years subsequently, was the siege of the new city, and, after almost superhuman exertions, its capture, by building a mole from the mainland. He literally levelled the place to the ground; a countless mult.i.tude was ma.s.sacred, two thousand persons were crucified, and Tyrian influence disappeared for ever.
[Sidenote: Foreign epochs in Greek history.]
In early Greek history there are, therefore, two leading foreign events: 1st, the opening of the Egyptian ports, B.C. 670; 2nd, the downfall of Old Tyre, 573. The effect of the first was chiefly intellectual; that of the second was to permit the commencement of commercial prosperity and give life to Athens.
[Sidenote: Antiquity of civilization and art in Egypt.]
At the dawn of European civilization, Egypt was, therefore, in process of decadence, gradually becoming less and less able to resist its own interior causes of destruction, or the attempts of its Asiatic rivals, who eventually brought it to ruin. At the first historical appearance of the country of the Nile it is h.o.a.ry and venerable with age. The beautiful Scripture pictures of the journey of Abram and Sarai, in the famine, the going down of Joseph, the exodus of the Israelites, all point to a long-settled system, a tranquil and prosperous state. Do we ask any proof of the condition of art to which the Egyptians had attained at the time of their earliest monuments? The masonry of the Great Pyramid, built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, has never yet been surpa.s.sed. So accurately was that wonder of the world planned and constructed, that at this day the variation of the compa.s.s may actually be determined by the position of its sides; yet, when Jacob went into Egypt, that pyramid had been built as many centuries as have intervened from the birth of Christ to the present day. If we turn from the monuments to their inscriptions, there are renewed evidences of antiquity. The hieroglyphic writing had pa.s.sed through all its stages of formation; its principles had become ascertained and settled long before we gain the first glimpse of it; the decimal and duodecimal systems of arithmetic were in use; the arts necessary in hydraulic engineering, ma.s.sive architecture, and the ascertainment of the boundaries of land, had reached no insignificant degree of perfection. Indeed, there would be but very little exaggeration in affirming that we are practically as near the early Egyptian ages as was Herodotus himself. Well might the Egyptian priests say to the earliest Greek philosophers, ”You Greeks are mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past.”
[Sidenote: Prehistoric life of Egypt.]
Traces of the prehistoric, premonumental life of Egypt are still preserved in the relics of its language, and the well-known principles of its religion. Of the former, many of the words are referable to Indo-Germanic roots, an indication that the country at an early period must have been conquered from its indigenous African possessors by intrusive expeditions from Asia; and this is supported by the remarkable principles of Egyptian religion. The races of Central Asia had at a very early time attained to the psychical stage of monotheism. Africa is only now emerging from the basest fetichism; the negro priest is still a sorcerer and rain-maker. The Egyptian religion, as is well known, provided for the vulgar a suitable wors.h.i.+p of complex idolatry, but for those emanc.i.p.ated from superst.i.tion it offered true and even n.o.ble conceptions. The coexistence of these apparent incompatibilities in the same faith seems incapable of any other explanation than that of an amalgamation of two distinct systems, just as occurred again many ages subsequently under Ptolemy Soter.
[Sidenote: Influence of Egypt on the knowledge and art of Europe.]
As a critical attention is being bestowed by modern scholars upon Egyptian remains, we learn more truly what is the place in history of that venerable country. It is their boast that the day is not distant when there will be no more difficulty in translating a page of hieroglyphics than in translating one of Latin or Greek. Even now, what a light has been thrown on all branches of ancient literature, science, art, mythology, domestic life, by researches which it may be said commenced only yesterday! From Egypt, it now appears, were derived the prototypes of the Greek architectural orders, and even their ornaments and conventional designs; thence came the models of the Greek and Etruscan vases; thence came many of the ante-Homeric legends--the accusation of the dead, the trial before the judges of h.e.l.l; the reward and punishment of every man, from the Pharaoh who had descended from his throne to the slave who had escaped from his chain; the dog Cerberus, the Stygian stream, the Lake of Oblivion, the piece of money, Charon and his boat, the fields of Aahlu or Elysium, and the islands of the blessed; thence came the first ritual for the dead, litanies to the sun, and painted or illuminated missals; thence came the dogma of a queen of heaven. What other country can offer such n.o.ble and enduring edifices to the G.o.ds; temples with avenues of sphinxes; ma.s.sive pylons adorned with obelisks in front, which even imperial Rome and modern Paris have not thought it beneath them to appropriate; porticoes and halls of columns, on which were carved the portraits of kings and effigies of the G.o.ds?
On the walls of the tombs still remain Pthah, the creator, and Neph, the divine spirit, sitting at the potters wheel, turning clay to form men; and Athor, who receives the setting sun into her arms; and Osiris, the judge of the dead. The granite statues have outlived the G.o.ds!
[Sidenote: The hieroglyphics.]
Moreover, the hieroglyphics furnish intrinsic evidence that among this people arose the earliest attempts at the perpetuation and imparting of ideas by writing. Though doubtless it was in the beginning a mere picture-writing, like that of the Mexicans, it had already, at the first moment we meet with it, undergone a twofold development--ideographic and phonetic; the one expressing ideas, the other sounds. Under the Macedonian kings the hieroglyphics had become restricted to religious uses, showing conclusively that the old priesthood had never recovered the terrible blows struck against it by Cambyses and Ochus. From that time forth they were less and less known. It is said that one of the Roman emperors was obliged to offer a reward for the translation of an obelisk. To the early Christian the hieroglyphic inscription was an abomination, as full of the relics of idolatry, and indicating an inspiration of the devil. He defaced the monuments wherever he could make them yield; and in many cases has preserved them for us by plastering them over to hide them from his sight.
In those enigmatical characters an extensive literature once existed, of which the celebrated books of Hermes were perhaps a corruption or a relic; a literature embracing compositions on music, astronomy, cosmogony, geography, medicine, anatomy, chemistry, magic, and many other subjects that have amused the curiosity of man. Yet of those characters the most singular misconceptions have been entertained almost to our own times. Thus, in 1802, Palin thought that the papyri were the Psalms of David done into Chinese, Lenoir that they were Hebrew doc.u.ments; it was even a.s.serted that the inscriptions in the temple of Denderah were the 100th Psalm, a pleasant ecclesiastical conceit, reminding one who has seen in Egyptian museums old articles of bra.s.s and gla.s.s, of the stories delivered down from hand to hand, that bra.s.s was first made at the burning of Corinth, and gla.s.s first discovered by s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners, who propped their kettle, while it boiled, on pieces of nitre.
[Sidenote: Antiquity of the Egyptian monarchy.]
[Sidenote: Causes of the rise of civilization.]
Thousands of years have pa.s.sed since the foundation of the first Egyptian dynasty. The Pyramids have seen the old empire, the Hycksos monarchs, the New Empire, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Mohammedan. They have stood while the heavens themselves have changed.
They were already ”five hundred years old when the Southern Cross disappeared from the horizon of the countries of the Baltic.” The pole-star itself is a newcomer to them. Humboldt, referring to these incidents, remarks that ”the past seems to be visibly nearer to us when we thus connect its measurement with great and memorable events.” No country has had such a varied history as this birthplace of European civilization. Through the darkness of fifty centuries we may not be able to discern the motives of men, but through periods very much longer we can demonstrate the conditions of Nature. If nations, in one sense, depend on the former, in a higher sense they depend on the latter. It was not without reason that the Egyptians took the lead in Mediterranean civilization. The geographical structure of their country surpa.s.ses even its h.o.a.ry monuments in teaching us the conditions under which that people were placed. Nature is a surer guide than the traces of man, whose works are necessarily transitory. The aspect of Egypt has changed again and again; its structure, since man has inhabited it, never. The fields have disappeared, but the land remains.
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