s i I
E G Y P T .
F rom the remotest times, with which we are acquainted, to the
present period, no country has excited so much attention as Egypt;
for it has had peculiar claims to men’s notice. Long before Rome
existed, and when the inhabitants of Greece were mere savages,
the egyptians were a numerous and civilized people, to whom
science was no stranger. From them the greeks derived the first
rudiments of instruction, and to them all the knowledge of the
ancients may be traced back as to it’s cradle. Of late, indeed,
great analogy has been discovered between the learning of the
hindoos and the egyptians; and hence it has been inferred, that
the egyptians were the scholars of the hindoos. Which were the
masters, however, and which the pupils, is a problem, the solution
of which we have neither data nor inclination to attempt; but
which may be hoped from the researches of our able countrymen,
in a field yet little explored: though there are certainly probabilities,
which incline us in favour of Asia. Still, if the egyptians
were the scholars of on asiatic people; or, which appears more
probable, brought the rudiments of knowledge with them from
Asia, when they migrated into the Thebaid, before they were able
to occupy the fertile vale beneath ; that they were the immediate
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