at the time such writing received its incipient projection; — when,
too, we remember the fact that, the physical characters of each type
of man in India and Egypt were different, and that no physical causes
but amalgamation have ever transformed one race into another, it is
impossible to resist the conviction that these Gangeatic and Nilotic
races have always been, that which, modern ¿¡fusions deducted, they
are now, distinct.
The Egyptians, for instance, had practised circumcision from time
immemorial, long before Abraham adopted this mark after his visit to
Egypt, in common with the later Ethiopic tribes; but this Miotic rite
was not practised in India, until introduced by Mohammedan conquests.
So, again, with regard to “ castes,” heretofore almost insolently obtruded,
in order to identify Egyptian with Hindostanic customs! It
■will be news to some coryphaei of the unity-doctrine, when they are
taught, in our Part III., that the “ caste-system” has never existed
along the Mle, and that, on the Ganges, it is a very modern invention.
To the extreme climatic dryness of Egypt are we mainly indebted
for the preservation of her monumental history. While the remains of
Greece, Rome, and other nations, none of them 3000 years old, crumble
at first touch, Egypt’s granitic obelisks, at the end of 4000 years, have
not yet lost their polish; and had all the early‘monuments of that
country been spared by barbarian hands, we should not now, after
fifty-three centuries, have to accuse Time as the cause of disputations
over the history of the old Empire.
That M e n e s of This was the first mortal king- of Egypt, is one of
the points in which classical authorities, Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes,
and Diodorus, agree with the genealogical lists upon tablets
and papyri; and we must regard him as the first historical founder of
an empire, which, for untold ages previously, had been approaching
its consolidation. His reign is placed by Lepsius at 3893 years b. c. ;
and although criticism grants that this date may be a few centuries
below or above the true era, yet there is so much irrefragable evidence
of the long duration of the empire prior to the fixed epoch of
the XI. 1th dynasty, 2300 years b . c., that any error, if there be subh,
in his chronological eomputatiShs, cannot be very great, while almost
immaterial to our present purposes. The august name of M e n e s is
gloriously associated with the building of Memphis, the oldest metropolis,
wdth foreign conquests, with public monuments, with the progress
of the arts and of internal improvements. To admit the possibility
of such legislative* actions, a numerous population and a long
preparatory civilization must have preceded him: to say nothing of
the contemporary nations with which this military Pharaoh held
intercourse, that must have been at least as old as. the Egyptians
themselves. To one who knows anything of the-topography of the
Mle-land, it need not be told that the science* of hydraulic qngineer-
ing, in particular, must’ have existed in high perfection before the
Lower Valley of the Mle could have been studded to any extent wdth
towns on the alluvium : because this stream had to be controlled by
dykes, canals, sluices, find similar works, long before the soil on its
banks could be uniformly cultivated; and, what an antiquity do not
these facts necessitate!
But,: whatever uncertainty may hang over the first three dynasties
(of which coetaneous records are now lost), when we come to the IYth—
“ We may [in the language of the Kev. John Kenrick] congratulate ourselves that we
have at length reached the period of undoubted cotemporaneons'monuments in Egyptian
history. The pyramids, and the sepulchres near them, still remain to assure us that we
are not walking in a land of shadows, but among a powerful and populous nation, far
advanced|in the arts of life; and, as a people can only progressive# attain such a station,
the light of historic certainty is reflected back from this era upon the ages which precede
it. . . The glimpse which we thus obtain of Kgypi, in the fifth ceptury after Menes, according
to the lowest computation, reveals to us.some general facts, which lead to important
inferences. In all its great characteristics, Egypt was the same as we see it 1000 years
later. * A well-organized monarchy and religion elaborated throughout the country The
Mer0g:lypM0 Writing the same> in a11 its leadin«peculiarities, as it continued to
the end of the monarchy of the Pharaohs.” 286,4.;
Bas-reliefs beautifully eut7%epulehral arehitqpture, and pyramidql
B p P W ^h s (fed and black), papyrus-pop^ and
chemica,lly-p|epared colors ! — these are proud evidences of the Mem-
phitic civilization of fifty-three centuries agof that every man with
eyes to she can now behold £jn noble fdiios, published by France,
ffsiscany, and Prussia; and concerning which any one, not an ignoramus
through, education, or a blockhead by nature, can acquire adequate
knowledge by merely reading those English, French, German, i
or Italian works, printed within the last fifteen years, and abundantly
cited at the jm d of this volume, which are at the present hour very
accessible to all mtelligent-readers, ewry^where but on the bookshelves
®1 primary seminaries. This reservation made, we appeal, through
Ma. P°Pular works, to the moll ancient sculptures, in hopes of
asee aming "What was the Type of the primitive Egyptians9
Let our departure be taken, in tlils inquiry, from one of those
m u i gl6S 6Xtant 111 >the sePulcliral habitation of Seti I., before
alluded to (vide ante, p. 85, Fig. 1), which establishes what Egyptian
ar considered, m the fifteenth bentury -b . c., the beau-ideal of the
gyptians themselves. Beneath the held (Fig. 152) we place a re-
ucgon of one of the same full-length figures (Fig. 153), which, on
me original, is colored in deep red. The readlr has now before his
ye standard effigy, typical of the Egyptian race, such as the “ hun-
ared-gated” Thebes exhibited in her “streets about 3400 y*• ears aOeo.