RESEARCHES ON THE EARLY EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 1759, 20 June 1877, Page 3

RESEARCHES ON THE EARLY EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES.

While the researches of the lamented Mr Smith have thrown light on Assyrian mythology, and the brilliant discoveries of Schlieman have made Agamemnon again live as a hero-king, the patient investigations of M. Marietta m Egypt have taken back the highly civilised Egyptians to a period far beyond that of the existence of any other historical nation. The early dynasties of Egypt date 0000 years from the present time, or 2000 years before Abraham lived m Chaldea. The fragments bearing record to tho state of thought of this earliest known civilised people have a deep interest for us, when we perceive that some of the fundamental dogmas of existing faiths here had their origin, while beliefs which yet hold m religion and philosophy, and prevailing moral precepts, are to be found m the earliest inscriptions. From this well of most ancientlearning, the Jewish people drew most of the conceptions of the ruling Power m the universe, which, through Christianity and Mahomcdanism, have so largely influenced the mind of the western world. It is m the earliest times of the Empire, those preceding the splendours of the Seti and Ramses, and the disastrous invasions of the Shepherds, that we find E^ypt to be a civilised nation, already possessed of many arts m a high state of perfection, and holding deep philosophic views of the universe ; a period when the very existence of the universe was, until lately, considered a matter of doubt.

Many centuries before any Asiatic people had found means to note their thoughts, Ej;ypt had its perfect alphabet. We know now that the Phoenician alphabet, whence came the Greek and all of our own, was only a simplification of tho hieroglyphic character. Of this most ancient Empire, which distance makes almost invisible, fragments alone of m Bcriptions have descended to us. The epitaph of a functionary of the sth Dynasty 55 centuries ago is m the following terms : — " Having seen things, I have gone out from this world, where I have spoken truth, where I have done justly. Be good for me, you who shall come after ; render justice to your ancestor." This is the touching epitaph of a woman :— "I weep after the breeze on the banks of the flowing Nile, which refreshed my grief." Another, also from the Ritual of the Dead, is an exquisite invocation : — " Oh heart, heart, which comest to me from my mother ; my heart of when I was upon earth, do not rise up against me as witness ; do not charge me before God the Great." A little later than this earliest time, but near it, being at the latest at the 12th Dynasty, is the magnificent hymn to the Sun, "Thou awakenest benificently, Ammon-Ra ; them awakenest truly Advance, Lord of Eternity Those who are, taste the breath of thy life. Thou art blessed of every creature ; hidden beinjj, of whom we know not the image ; child who art born each day ; ancient one who pasgent through eternity ! He it is who listens to the prayer of the oppressed ; tender of heart to whoever implores him, delivering the timid from the bold ; judge of the powerful and of the unfortunate. Master of intelligence, his word is substance. He gives movement to all things ; by his action m the abyss, the joys of light hare been created. " The philosophic and scientific depth of these last lines meritalonc a longcommentary. The depth of Egyptian conceptions m cosmogony may be gathered from a verse of the " Ritual of the Dead," which is of the highest antiquity. "I am Atoum (the Inaccessible), who has made the heavens, who has created all creatures : he who has appeared m the celestial abyss. lam Ra, at his rising m the beginning, he who governs that which he has made. lam the great God who engenders himself, m the water which is the abys3, father of the poda. I am the yemterday, and I know the morrow. lam the law of the existence of beings. I come into my country. He wipes out sins, he destroys stains." These extracts show that the fundamental ideas of Egyptian religion passed into subsequent religious history. Their similarity to the opening of Genisis and expressions of John is evident. 4 The primitive idea of divinity, according to M. GreTiault, is a simple God acting through his son. The primordial idea is that of a divinity one and trinary at the same time. Floating and confused as they appear to us m the most ancient texts, the conception of a Divinity appears to bave mingled m a somewhat vague synthesis, and m a measure difficult to determine, the three solutions that the human mind has given later to the religious problem. The primordial idea is that of a Divinity at the same time one and trinary — a double principal, male and female, engendering itself from all eternity m the night of the abyss. From this principle proceeds a third person, called, according to the point of view from which it is considered, Ptah as demiurge, Ra as solar agent, Apis as victim incarnate m a terrestial body. In his admirable memoir on the mother of Apis, M. Marietta has shown what precision the Egyptians gare to the dogma of the incarnation, which we find at the origin of the worship of Apis. Later, the one being produce* successive sons, emanations of the substance after having been simple attributes. At the same time, the solar personification of the Creator acquires a prepondering importance, due to the special conditions of the valley of the Nile. The perpetual presence, the regular return m the heavens of the star, the source of all light, of all heat, and of every benefit, its daily struggle wich the darkness and with nocturnal terrors, origin of the myth of Osiris and Typhon, lead religious thoughts to that dualistic conception which personifies all good m him, and all evil m his adversary — a moral conception, inspired by the constant course of nature.

The passages which treat of Cosmogony are too obscure to be enabled to decide, if matter is an emanation from the divine substance or a creation. The first of these doctrines prevailed later, but the text indicates rather a relation of causality. However, from a scientific point of view, we cannot sufficiently remark those passages of the hymns, and of the ritual, which contain the formula, unconsciously perhaps, of the grand law of creation — the transformation of light and heat into force.

The immortality of the soal is what springs the clearest from the Egyptian doctrine. Taken at its origin, and before the subtle myths that disfigure it later, this doctrine present* to us " the journey to the divine lands " as a aeries of proofs ; coming out of which the ascension to

light^ takes place, the " manifestation to the daj-," and the reunion of the wandering portion to the eternal substance. The unity of a Supreme Being existing by Himself, His eternity, His omnipotence, and the eternal generation m God — the creation of the world and of a'l living beings attributed to this Supreme God — and the immortality of the soul, completed by the dogma of rewards and punishments. Su«h is the sublime and persistent basis which, inspite of all the mythologicaldeviations, and embroideries, should assure the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians an honorable place among the nations of antiquity; and, if it be objected that a religion is only worthy from its morality and precepts, this funeral inscription from the Ritual may be cited:— "l attached myself to God by my love ; I have given bread to him who hungered ; water to him who thirsted ; garments to the naked ; I have given shelter to the desolate." Is not this like a page of the Gospel detached centuries beforehand ? Our filial respect for this people would be justified if we knew but this single sentence on one stone — Whence has come the source of all our civilisation.

The multiplicity and the perfection of the moral representations at Sakkarah allow of the life of this .-society being followed m all its most familiar details. Its isolation at once strikes us. It lives rigorously enclosed iv the oasis of the valley of the Nile, drawing all its resources from this privileged land, and I appears to ignore the rest of the world, even Asia its neighbor, with which its existence is later bo intimately connected. Not only its ideai, its beliefs, its artg, but its material life, its wants, even its vegetables and animals are exclusively Egyptian. It would be a curious study to reconstruct the fauna of the ancient empire before the acclimatisation of the Asiatic beasts of burden from the hundreds of animals figured on the bas - reliefs, whose scrupulous resemblance leaves no Toom for doubt. The present auxiliaries, most indispensable to domestic and agricultural life, were unknown to the Memphitic cultivators of the sth and 6th dynasties. The camel, the horae, the sheep, the pig, and the fowl were wanting. There is not a single type of these Bpecies m the numerous scenes m which the labors of daily life are represented, and of the world m which they lived. On tho other hand, tho ass, cattle of several kinds, goats, dogs, numberless varieties of aquatic birds, geese, ducks, flamingoes, Numidian cranes, domestic herons, the ibis, the pigeon, the sparrow, and. among wild animals, the lion, the jackal, the leopard, the antelope, the gazelle, the hare, tho ichneumons, are reproduced m profusion. The hippopotamus, the crocodile, and all the families of tish which are now found m the waters of the Delta are figured with the precision of detail of a zoological chart. This remote period was one of high material civilisation. The Pyramids remain to attest the perfection m construction, and numerous arts nourished. So far as we can judge, the Egyptians were an African people, not negroid certainly, but probably associated with the Berbers of North Africa and Cuanches of Teneriffe. To the life long duty of preparing and decorating their tombs, we owe all of our knowledge of the builders of the Pyramids.