The Press Saturday, December 28, 1929. Desert Values.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19813, 28 December 1929, Page 12

The Press Saturday, December 28, 1929. Desert Values.

One of the by-products of recent political controversies over Egyp*t has been a revival of interest in Egyptian culture, and in the Egyptian background of sand. The influence exerted upon the modern British mind by the great deserts of Africa and Arabia has always been strong, and in its more recent phases is attested by the popularity of " desert" fiction, from Hichens' "Garden of Allah" to the school of the sheikh %nd the " Hank "and Buddy*' type; also by the organisation of desert trips for tourists,, and in many other ways. Sensible people will not see more in this than one of the modern man's refuges from the boredom of a life which becomes more and more urban and increasingly cramped by the bonds of routine. Even the less sophisticated Middle Ages felt the need of pastoral and other forms of Romance as a relief from the tedium of everyday existence, while we are driven to such fields as rum-running and Chinese or Voodoo magic for our thrills, and here the Desert plays its little part.

But it comes as a new idea to us that the Desert may have exercised a far more important function than this in the history of the civilisation of Man. The great new History of Egypt, by Dr. James Baikie, presents two such illuminating and pregnant suggestions—the one purely political and historical, the other rather spiritual and religious. The first of these deals with the Desert as a political and social barrier which served to isolate the Egyptian community and so to assist in the development -of a distinctive and elaborate polity. How formidable a defence the Desert can be, in the military sense, was amply illustrated in the Great War, even in these days of scientifically developed transport. In ancient times the Nile Valley was almost inaccessible from any point from which danger could threaten; " the motive had to be very strong " which drew an ancient army to face " the risks and terrors of the long " desert march from the maritime plain "of Palestine across the barren bridge "of the Isthmus," says Dr. Baikie, so that, though Egypt was more than once conquered, she was at peace during very long periods of time, not being herself a militaristic or conquering nation. " That wonderful " thing, so essentially a thing by' it"self, which we know as Egyptian " culture, would never have developed," but, if the country had been more easily accessible, "would have been " lost or overlaid by the influences of " fiercer and more warlike races." Thus the Desert is seen to have functioned much as does the belt of ploughed land with which the modern forester protects his plantations from the risk of fire, or as "the encircling foam" has done in the case of modern England, giving th,ose "advantages of " an insular position" upon which generations of English schoolboys have written their themes. So, as our author puts it, "the debt which the whole "world owes to the ancient Egyptian "is not conditioned by his valley and "river alone, but in no small degree " also by his guardian deserts." Dr. Baikie's other suggestion is of even greater and farther-reaching import, concerning as it does the genesis and growth of that central religious idea, " the passion for- immortality." The ancient Egyptian "can scarcely " have failed at an early stage in his " history to recognise how wonderfully " the desert soil in which he buried his "dead preserved for long stretches of "time the outward semblance of the " human form, and thus, no doubt, the "idea of immortality was coupled in "his mind with that idea of the pre- " servation of the actual bodily frame, " as a condition of the continuous en- " durance of the personality, which "found expression at last, and during "almost all the historic period, in the "practice of mummification." Thus the Desert is presented to us as the natural locus of the conception and gestation of the idea of immortality. We may go further still. The early Christians, the ancient Buddhists, and many great apostles of immortality have shown by their practice that solitude is a necessary condition for the development of the spiritual life; the hermit, whose life was devoted to contemplation and communion with the Infinite, was a dweller in the Desert, an eremite, as our word still testifies, and this factor enters as an essential element into the poetry and philosophy of Wordsworth and of a host of other champions of the immortality of the soul in the poetry and philosophy of modern Europe. In the fine phrase of John Hookham Frere, the Desert is that part of His estate which "God "keeps in His own hands," and the Arabic name for it, the Garden of Allah, which Hiehens' novel has made so familiar to us all, embodies the identical idea. The Desert, indeed, appeals to something very profound in our nature and satisfies a certain natural and instinctive craving which is but faintly reflected in fleeting crazes for the Simple Life, or the Return to Nature, or the Call of the Unknown. From the economic point of view, of course, the Desert is only ?o much waste space, and there is something | splendid and inspiring in tnm efforts

to reclaim it and make it blossom as the rose, yet it may be permitted to us to hope that the march of modern Science and the pressure of " Mal- " thusian " populations may never entirely banish from the world this ancient nursery of our spiritual life.