EGYPT IN THE TIME OF MOSES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2106, 5 July 1894, Page 42

EGYPT IN THE TIME OF MOSES.

We are only beginning to understand the height of civilisation to which Egypt and other ancient countries around the Mediterranean had attained even before the time of Moses. Maspero and Tomkins have illustrated the extent and accuracy of the geographical knowledge of the Egyptians of this period. The latter closes a paper on tbis subject with the following words:— "The Egyptians, dwelling in their green, warm river-course, and on the watered levels of their Fayoum and Delta, were yet a very enterprising people, full of curiosity, literary, scientific in method, admirable delineators of nature, skilled surveyors, makers of maps, trained and methodical administrators of domestic and foreign affairs, kept alert by the movements of their great river, and by the necessities of commerce, whiah forced them to the Syrian forests for their building timber and to Kusb and Pun for their precious furniture woods and ivory, to say nothing of incense, aromatics, cosmetics, asphalt, exotic plants, and pet and strange animals, with a hundred other needful things." The heads copied by Petrie, from Egyptian tombs, show that the physical features of all the people inhabiting the surrounding countiies, as well as their manners, industries, and arts, were well known to the Egyptians. The papers of Lockyer have shown that long before the Mosaic age the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile had mapped out the heavens, ascertained the movements of the moon and plane tg, established the zodiacal signs, discriminated the poles of the ecliptic and the equator, ascertained the law of eclipses and the precession of the equinoxes, and in fact had worked out all tbe astronomical data which can be learned by observation, and had applied it to practical usee. Lockyer would even ask us to trace this knowledge as far back as 6000 years b 0., or into the pastglacial or antediluvian period ; but however this may be, astronomy was a very old science in the time of Moses, and it is quite unnecessary to postulate a late date for the references to the heavens in Genesis or Job. In geodesy and allied arts also the Egyptians had long before this time attained to a perfeclion never tince excelled, so that our best instruments can detect no errors in very old measurements and levellings. The art 3 of architecture, metallurgy, and weaving had attained to the highest development ; civilisation and irrigation, with their consequent agriculture and cattle breeding, were old and well- understood arts; and how much of science and practical sagacity is needed for regulating the distribution of Nile water, anyone may learn who will refer to the reports of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff and his assistants. Sculpture and painting in the age of Moses had attained their acme, and were falling into conventional styles. Laws and the acts of government had become fixed and settled. Theology and morals, and the doctrine of rewar 3s and punishments, bad been elaborated into complex systems. Ample material existed for history, not only in monuments and temple inscriptions, but in detailed writings on papyrus. Egypt has left a wealth of records of this kind, unsurpassed by any nation, and very much of these belongs to the time before Moses ; while, as Birch has truly said, tbe Egyptian historical texts are, "in most instances, contemporaneous with the events they record, and written and executed under public control." There waß also abundance of poetical and imaginative literature, and treatises on medicine and other useful arts. At the court of Pharoah, correspondence was carried on with all parts of the civilised world, in many languages, and in various forma of writing, including that of Egypt itself, that of Chaldea, and probably also tbe alphabetical writing afterward used by the Hebrews, Pncenicianp, and Greeks, but which seems to have originated at a very early period among the Mineans, or Punites, of South Arabia. Educations were carried on in institutions of various grades, from ordinary schools to universities. In the latter, we are told, were professors or 11 mystery teachers " of astionomy, geography, mining, theology, history, and languages, as well as many oE the higher technical arts. — Sib William Dawson, in Tbe Expositor.