RAMESES THE GREAT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6132, 19 March 1898, Page 6

RAMESES THE GREAT.

For my part (says Mr Eden Phillpotts, in Black and White) these human remains of famous Pharaohs in v ohe Gizeh Museum caused me some indignation thus Been exposed behind panes of glass. Why, because a great on© happens to have perished some few thousand of years, Bhould we desecrate his dusb in this fashion, and treat it as a peep show ? And groat beyond question was Ranieses ll.— a man of genius, the first ruler of his time, one who at ten years of age sat in the State councils pf his father at Thebes, who reigned st twelve years old, who at seventeen led conquering armies against thp warlike Lybians/ "Thou wast a ruler of this land -when thon wast ' Btjll in the ' e nS>" declares the famous' inscription on ' the walls of the Hedinet Habon temple. " Thou didst act with ■wisdom, didst speak even in ohildhood for t^e land's weal." At an age when our young men are just passing to the universities, into the services, or through some other portal leading to life's battle, the second Rameses had made his power felt throughout ancient Egypt and the civilised world. He filled the throne for sixty-seven years, passing as an old man of about eighty from the scene of his remarkable life. His workß were manifold The Egypt of his day won a thousand industrial advantages from his energy and foresight; He built great treasure oities, developed the canal system, improved agriculture, advanced his nations welfare, extended her borders, and loomed a coloasal power through nearly three generations of mankind. His name was whispered next to the gods of the land. He appeared no less than a manifestation of deity to the masses. That he had many faults is certain, in that he was a man ; but there can be no shadow of doubt that the soul of one of the giants of earth inhabited the small frame of Ramesos the Groat, and thirteen hundred years and more before the beginning of the -/Christian era his was certainly the greatest najue on earth. To-day his ashes lio iv a glass case, and for a few piastres any eye inny ' •behold them. In the hall of the royal mummies at the Gkeh Museum do " the dead life up their voices and tell the tale of their whole life," to quote the words of Renan. Hero lio the bodies unearthed at Thebes in 1881 by Marietta) Bey, and the collection includes a king and queen of the seventeenth dynasty, five kingß and four queens of the eighteenth dynasty, and three successive monarchs of the nineteenth, these last being Rameeesthe Great, his father Seti 1., and his grandfather. The twentieth dynasty lias no representative, but belonging to the twenty-first are two kings, four queens, princes, a "princess and sundry priests.