From Egypt to Japan

This utter destitution would entail immense suffering, and perhaps cause the whole race to die out, but for the climate, which is so mild that it takes away in a great degree the need of shelter and raiment, which in other countries are necessary to human existence.

This extreme poverty is aggravated by one disease, which is almost universal. The bright sun, glaring on the white sands, produces an inflammation of the eyes, which being neglected, often ends in blindness. I have seen more men in Egypt with one eye, or with none, than in all Europe.

It might be supposed that a people, thus reduced by poverty and smitten by disease, would be crushed out of all semblance of humanity. And yet this Arab race is one which has a strong tenacity of life. Most travellers judge them harshly, because they are disgusted by the unceasing cry for backsheesh, which is the first word that a stranger hears as he lands in Egypt, and the last as he leaves it. But even this (although it is certainly a nuisance and a pest) might be regarded with more merciful judgment, if it were considered that it is only the outward sign of an internal disease; that general beggary means general poverty and general misery.

Leaving this noisy crowd, which gathers about us in every village that we enter, it is easy to find different specimens of Arab character, which engage our interest and compel our respect. One cannot look at these men without admiring their physique. They remind me much of our American Indians. Like them, they are indolent, unless goaded to work by necessity, and find nothing so pleasant as to sit idly in the sun. But when they stand up they have an attitude as erect as any Indian chief, and a natural dignity, which is the badge of their race. Many a man who has but a single garment to cover him, will wrap it about him as proudly as any Spanish cavalier would toss his cloak over his shoulders, and stalk away with a bold, free stride, as if, in spite of centuries of humiliation, he were still the untamed lord of the desert. Their old men are most venerable in appearance. With their long beards, white turbans, and flowing garments, they might stand for the picture of Old Testament patriarchs. The women too (who do not cover their faces as much as those in lower Egypt), though coarsely and meanly dressed, yet as they walk with their water-jars on their heads, stand more erect than the fashionable ladies of our cities. I see them every day coming to fill their "pitchers" precisely as Rebecca and Rachel came three thousand years ago, and if I should approach one, saying, Give me to drink, (which I might well do, for the water of the Nile – though containing so much sediment, that it needs to be filtered – is as soft and sweet as that of our own Croton), she would let down her jar from her head just as Rebecca let down her jar for the servant of Abraham, when he came to ask her in marriage for his master's son Isaac.

The children too, though often naked, and if clothed at all, always in rags, yet have fine olive complexions, and dazzling teeth, and those bright eyes which are the sign of a degree of native intelligence.

Nor can I refuse to say a word for the poor donkey-boy. Many years ago a Scotchman in the Cape Colony, South Africa, who was accustomed to make long journeys in the bush, wrote a little poem, depicting the joys of that solitary life, which began,

"Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent bush-boy by my side."

The donkey-boy is never silent, he is always singing or calling to his donkey, urging him forward with stick and voice; yet who could wish a more patient or faithful attendant, who, though on foot, trots by your side from morning to night, the slave of your caprice, taking meekly all your rebukes, perhaps undeserved, and content at last with a pittance for his service?

So have I had a little girl as a water-carrier, running close to my saddle all day long, keeping up with the donkey's pace, and carrying a small jar of water on her head, to wash my hands and face, or assuage my thirst, thankful at last for a few piastres as her reward.

We reached Assiout, the capital of Upper Egypt, early Sunday morning, and laid up for the day. While our boat's company were preparing to go on shore to see the town, I mounted a donkey and started off to find the American Mission, which is at work among the Copts, who claim to be the descendants of the ancient Egyptians. I arrived at the chapel in time to hear a sermon and an address to the Sunday-school. As the services were in Arabic, I could not understand what was said, but I could perceive at once the earnestness of the speakers, and the close attention of the hearers. After the sermon there was a baptism. The congregation was a very respectable one both in numbers and appearance. There were perhaps two hundred present, all decently, although some were very poorly clad, and presented a striking contrast to the ragged and dirty people around them. In the quiet and orderly worship, and the songs that were sung, which were Arabic words to American tunes, there was much to make one think of home. There was nothing to distinguish the congregation except the Oriental turbans and dress, and the fact that the women sat apart from the men, separated by a screen, which shows that the seclusion of women is not confined to the Mohammedans. It is an Oriental custom, and is observed by the Copts as well as the Moslems. I am told that even among Christian families here, it is not considered quite "the thing" for women to go abroad and show impertinent curiosity, and that ladies of good position, who are as intelligent as most Orientals, have never seen the Nile, but two miles distant! Such is the power of fashion even in Africa. In the church are several men of wealth, who give freely of their means, as well as use their influence, for its support. The Copts are nominal Christians, although, like most of the Christian sects of the East, they are very ignorant and very superstitious. But they have not the fanatical hatred to Christianity of the Mussulmans. They acknowledge the authority of the Bible, and are thus more open to argument and persuasion. Besides this congregation, the mission has some dozen schools in the surrounding country. In the town itself, besides the schools for the poorest children, it has a boarding-school for those of a better class, an academy which is the beginning of a college, and half a dozen young men are preparing for the ministry. The field is a very hopeful one, and I was assured that the success of the mission was limited only by the means at its disposal.

After visiting the schools, Rev. Mr. Strang accompanied me through the town. It has over twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and is the point of departure for the caravans which cross the Great Desert to Darfour and the far interior of Africa, returning laden with ivory and ostrich feathers, as in the days of King Solomon. We saw in an open square, or market-place, some hundred camels, that, as they lay wearily on the earth, looked as if they might have made the long journey over the trackless sands. Laborers were at work, with no respect for the day, for Friday is the Mohammedan Sabbath; and my friend pointed out, where a number of workmen were building a house, the "taskmaster" sitting on the top of the wall to overlook them, as in the days of the Bible. As we returned by an old portal in the city walls, we found a number of long-bearded and venerable men, who were "sitting in the gate" as "elders" to administer justice. The city gate is the place of honor and of justice now, as it was thousands of years ago.

In the mountain behind the town are a great number of tombs, like those of Beni-Hassan, vast chambers hewn out of the rock ages ago for burial places. We walked along by these silent memorials of the mighty dead, to the summit, from which is one of the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nile. Below the plain is spread out for many miles, well watered like the garden of the Lord, the emerald green coming up to the very foot of the barren hills. But there it ceases instantly, giving place to the desert.

These contrasts suggest some comparisons between the scenery and the climate of Egypt, and our own country. Whoever breathes this balmy air, and looks up to this cloudless sky, must feel that the Lord of all the earth has been bountiful to Egypt. As we read of the winter storms now raging over half of Europe, we bless the more kindly skies that are over us now. But after a few weeks of this dreamy, languid life, one begins to feel the want of something else to stir his blood. He finds that nature in Egypt, like the works of man, like the temples and the pyramids, is a sublime monotony. The landscapes are all the same. There are four or five grand features, the river, the valley, the hills that enclose it, and beyond the boundless desert, and over all the burning sun and sky. These are the elements that enter into every landscape. There is no change, no variety. Look where you will, there is no vision in the distance of lofty peaks dark with pines, or white with snow, no torrents leaping down the mountain side (the silence of Egypt is one of the things that most oppress me), no brooks that run among the hills, no winding paths along their banks that invite the stranger to lose himself in their shade. I see indeed hills on either horizon, but they are barren and desolate. On all this double range, for six hundred miles, there is not a single green thing – not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass, not even a rock covered with moss, only a waste of sand and stone. If you climbed those hills yonder across the valley you would look off upon a boundless plain of sand that stretches to the Red Sea; while behind where we stand is the Libyan Desert, which is only an arm of the Great Sahara, that crosses almost the whole of the continent. In all this waste the valley of the Nile is the one narrow strip of fertility. And even this is parched and burnt up to the very water's edge. Hence the monotony of vegetation. There is not a forest in all Egypt, only the palm groves, which are planted like garden flowers, but no tangled wild wood, no lofty elms, no broad-spreading oaks that cast their grateful shadow on the burning plains. All that variety of nature, with which in other lands she beguiles the weary heart of man, is wanting here. It is indeed the land of the sun, and in that is at once its attraction and its terror, as the fiery orb beats down upon it, withering man and beast, and turning the earth into a desert.

Seeing this monotony of nature, and feeling this monotony of life, one begins to pine after awhile, for a return to the scenes more varied, though more wild and rugged, of his own more northern clime. We hear much of the beauty of a "cloudless sky." It is indeed a relief for a few weeks to those who escape from wintry storms, from bitter winds and blinding snow. But who would have sunshine forever? The light and warmth are better when softened and subdued by clouds that intercept the overpowering rays. But here the clouds are few, and they do not "return after the rain," for there is no rain. In Lower Egypt there is what may be called a rainy season. In the Delta, as the clouds roll up from the Mediterranean, there is sometimes a sound of abundance of rain. But in Upper Egypt it may be said that it never rains. In Assiout it has rained but three times in ten years! Of course the heat is sometimes fearful. Now it is mid-winter, and the air is comparatively cool and bracing, but in midsummer it reaches 110 and 112 degrees in the shade! For days and nights together the heat is so intense that not a leaf stirs in the palm groves. Not only is there not a drop of rain – there is not a breath of air. This it is to have a "cloudless sky"! Gladly then would our friend exchange for half the year the climate of Egypt for that of America. How refreshing it would be to him to see, just for once, great masses of black clouds gathering over the Arabian Hills, to see the lightnings flash as he has seen them in his native Ohio, and to hear the thunder-peals rolling across the valley from mountain to mountain, and at last dying away on the Libyan desert.

Think of this, ye who shiver in your winter storms at home, and sigh for Egypt. Take it all in all, would you make the exchange?

CHAPTER III

THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT – DID MOSES GET HIS LAW FROM THE EGYPTIANS?

In the distribution of the monuments of Egypt, it is a curious fact that the Pyramids are found almost wholly in Lower Egypt, and the great Temples in Upper Egypt. It was not till we had been a week on the Nile, that we had our first sight of the latter at Denderah. We have since spent three days at Thebes, the great centre of historical interest, and have made a regular campaign of sight-seeing, starting on excursions every morning, and thus have explored the ruins on both sides of the river – for Thebes, like many other great cities – like London and Paris – was built on two sides of a river, but one much greater than the Thames or the Seine, yet not so great but that it was spanned by a bridge (at least this is inferred from some ancient sculptures and inscriptions), over which poured a population such as pours over London Bridge to-day. The site seems made for a great capital, for here the mountains retire from the river, sweeping round in a circuit of some fifty miles, leaving a broad plain to be filled with human habitations. Here four thousand years ago was built a city greater than that on the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, than Nineveh or Babylon. Here was the centre of power and dominion for two continents – not only for Africa, but for Asia – to which flocked the multitudinous nations of Assyria and Arabia and Persia and the farthest East, as well as the tribes of Ethiopia – as two thousand years later all the peoples of the earth flocked to Rome. It is easy, from historical records and monumental inscriptions, to form some idea of the glory of this capital of the ancient world. We can imagine the tumult and the roar of this more ancient Rome, when the chariots of mighty kings, and the tread of armies returning victorious from distant wars, thundered through her hundred gates.

Then did the kings of Egypt rear temples and palaces and statues and obelisks worthy of all that greatness. Then were built the most gigantic temples ever raised by the hand of man – as much surpassing in vastness and grandeur those reared centuries afterward by the Greeks, as the latter surpass anything by the moderns. The temples of Thebes – including Luxor and Karnac, which are parts of one city – are as much grander than the Parthenon, as the Parthenon is grander than the Madeleine at Paris, which is a feeble attempt to copy it.

We have now been a week – beginning with Denderah – studying these ruins, and may give certain general impressions. We do not attempt any detailed description, which must necessarily be inadequate, since neither words nor figures convey an idea of them, any more than they do of the Alps. What would be thought of an avenue nearly two miles long, lined with over twelve hundred colossal sphinxes? Yet such was the avenue from Luxor to Karnac – an approach worthy to lead to the temple of the gods. What can we say of a forest of columns, each twelve feet in diameter, stretching out in long colonnades; of the massive walls covered with bas-reliefs; and obelisks in single shafts of granite, of such height and weight that it is the wonder of modern engineering how they could be cut from the side of the hills, and be brought a hundred and forty miles, and erected on their firm bases.

But this temple – or rather cluster of temples and palaces – was not, like the temple of Solomon, finished in a single reign. Karnac was not the work of one man, or of one generation. It was twenty-five hundred years in building, successive kings and dynasties adding to the mighty whole, which was to represent all the glory of Egypt.

The general impression of these temples – and the same is true of the Egyptian statues and sculptures – is one of grandeur rather than beauty. They seek to overpower the senses by mere size. Sometimes they overdo the matter. Thus in the temples at Karnac the columns seem to me too large and too much crowded for the best effect. Ordinary trees may be planted in a dense grove, but great, broad-spreading oaks or elms require space around them; and if these columns were a little more spaced– to use a printer's word – the architectural effect would be still grander. So in the Egyptian sculpture, everything is colossal. In the granite lions and sphinxes there is always an aspect of power in repose which is very impressive, and strikes one with awe. But in any lighter work, such as frescoes and bas-reliefs, there is a total absence of delicacy and grace. Nothing can be more stiff. They sometimes have a rude force of drawing, but beauty they have none. That was born in Greece. All the sculptures on all the temples of Egypt are not worth – except as historical monuments – the friezes of the Parthenon.

One thing else has struck me much as to the plan of these temples, viz.: that we see in them the types and models of much that has been reproduced in various forms of ecclesiastical architecture. One has but to observe with some care the construction of these vast basilicas, to see how many features of Jewish, and even of Christian and Moslem architecture, have been adopted from still older temples and an earlier religion. Thus in the temple at Edfoo there is first the vast enclosure surrounding the whole, and then within the walls an outer court open to the sky, corresponding to the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple at Jerusalem, to the Court of the Fountains leading to the Mosques, and the cloister surrounding the approaches to old abbeys and cathedrals. One might find a still closer resemblance in forms of worship, in the vestments of priests, in the altars, and in the burning of incense, etc., a parallel which scholars have often traced.

And now of all this magnificence and glory of the ancient capital of Egypt, what remains? Only these vast ruins of temples and palaces. The "plain of Thebes" is still here, but deserted and silent. A few columns and statues rise above the plain to mark where the city stood, but the city itself is gone as much as the people who inhabited it four thousand years ago. A few miserable mud huts are built against the walls of mighty temples, and the ploughman drives his team over the dust of the city of a hundred gates. I saw a fellah ploughing with a cow and a camel yoked together, and a couple of half-naked Arabs raising water with their shadoof between the Memnon (the statue which was said to sing when its stony lips were touched by the rising of the sun) and its brother statue – the two great Colossi, between which ran the Royal street to Luxor. Was there ever a more complete and utter desolation? In the temple called the Rameseum once stood the largest statue that ever was known – that of Rameses the Great (the same who had a statue at Memphis, for he erected monuments to himself everywhere), cut out of a single block of granite brought from the First Cataract, and weighing nearly nine hundred tons! On this was inscribed, as Herodotus writes, who saw it twenty-three hundred years ago: "I am the king of kings: if any man wish to know how great I am, and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works!" What a comment on the emptiness of human ambition, that this colossal statue, which was to last to the end of the world, was long ago pulled down by a later conqueror, Cambyses, the Persian, and now lies on its back, with its nose knocked off, and eyes put out, and all its glory in the dust!

In studying the figures and the inscriptions on the walls of temples, there are many things which throw light on the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians. Here is a scene of hunting, or of fishing, or of feasting. Here are the different trades, which show the skill of the people in the mechanic arts, and many scenes which give us an insight into their domestic life. These have been the subjects of two learned and most interesting works by Wilkinson, which open the very interior of ancient Egypt to our modern eyes. They show a very high degree of civilization – of skill in all the useful arts, a skill fully equal in many things, and in some greatly superior, to that of our own day. Wendell Phillips, in his famous lecture on "The Lost Arts," finds many of his illustrations in ancient Egypt. I could not but think that this furnished a very effective answer to those advocates of evolution, who hold that mankind sprung from animals, and have gradually developed to their present state. How much progress have the Egyptians made in four thousand years? Here the race has gone backward, so that there is certainly no inherent tendency in our nature to advance.

But I was less interested in studying the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, than their religious ideas. Herodotus says that the Egyptians were a very religious people, excelling all others in the honors paid to their gods; and this we can well believe, seeing the temples that they reared for their worship. But what were the gods they adored, and what sort of worship did they render, and how did all this act on the life and character of the people? Here we obtain a less exalted estimate of the ancient Egyptians. The remains which they have left, while they illustrate the greatness of the empire, which four thousand years ago had its seat in the valley of the Nile, do not give a high idea of its Religion. The land was wholly given to idolatry. The Egyptians had as many gods as the Greeks and Romans, only baser and lower, indicating baser and lower ideas. They made gods, not only of the sun, moon, and stars, but of beasts and birds and reptiles – of the apis and the ibis – of the serpent and the crocodile.

At Sakkara we visited one of the most stupendous mausoleums that we have seen in Egypt – one which Herodotus described, but which for centuries was so buried by the sands of the desert that its very site was not known until brought to light by the researches of Mariette Bey, who has done so much to restore the monuments of ancient Egypt. The approach to it was by an avenue of sphinxes, which led to a vast subterranean gallery – twenty feet wide and high – and leading two thousand feet, more than a third of a mile, under the earth. This long, vaulted passage is hewn in the solid rock – out of which open on either side a series of chambers or recesses, like side chapels – each containing a sarcophagus, 15 × 8 feet. These tombs, hollowed out of the solid granite, are so huge and massive that we wonder how they ever could have been got there. Yet these great sarcophagi – fit for the burial places of a long line of kings – were not for the Pharaohs or the Ptolemies, but for the Sacred Bulls! Thirty of these sarcophagi have been found, and on the walls are tablets which record the birth, and death, and burial of each one of these sacred beasts. These were the gods of Egypt, mother of the arts, and civilizer of the earth! This great repository of dead divinities is a colossal monument, at once of the architectural skill of the ancient Egyptians, and of their degrading superstition.

This single fact is enough to answer those who would imply, if they do not quite dare to assert, that the inspiration of the Books of Moses was derived from the Egyptians. It is a favorite theory of certain writers that Moses, being brought up in Egypt, here obtained both the Law and the Religion which he gave to the Israelites. No doubt he did learn much from a country that was at that time the most civilized in the world. He was brought up in a court, and enjoyed every advantage of a royal education. He was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And it detracts not at all from his inspiration, to suppose that he may have been instructed to embody in his new and better code whatever was excellent in the older system, and had been approved by the experience of centuries. The ceremonial laws – such as those of purification – may have been adopted from the Egyptians. But these are the mere fringes of the garment of the great Lawgiver. As soon as we open the Hebrew Scriptures, we find traces of a wisdom such as the Egyptians never knew. The very first sentence – "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" – scatters the fables of Isis and Osiris, and substitutes for the troop of heathen deities the worship of One Living and True God. This single declaration marks a stupendous advance in the religious faith and worship of mankind.

The same first principle appears as the corner-stone of the law given on Mount Sinai: "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

The second law of the first table breaks in pieces the images of the gods of the Egyptians: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth." This was spoken to a people that had just come out of a country where they worshipped beasts and birds and reptiles, and where the walls of the temples were covered with the images of all kinds of foul and creeping things.

In this age of the world, and among civilized nations, we cannot understand the passion for idolatry. Yet it is one of the most universal and ineradicable instincts of a half barbarous people. They see tokens of an unseen power in the forces of nature, in clouds and winds, in lightning and tempest, and they torment themselves with all imaginable terrors, from which they seek relief and protection in bowing down to gods of wood and stone.

The Israelites coming out of Egypt, were out of the house of bondage in one sense, but they were in it in another. They were continually relapsing into idolatry. The golden calf of Aaron was but an imitation of the sacred bulls of Egypt. Often they pined for the products of the fertile valley of the Nile. With nothing but the burning sands beneath their feet, they might well long for the shade of the palm tree and for its delicious fruit, and they said, Why hath this man Moses brought us up to die in this wilderness? It required forty years of wandering, and that a whole generation should leave their bones to whiten the sands of the desert, before their children could be wholly alienated from the worship of false gods. So not only with the Israelites, but with all nations of men, ages of fiery discipline have been necessary to bring back the race to this first article of our faith: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth."

We might follow the comparison through all the tables of the law, to show how absurd is the pretence that what Moses taught to the Israelites he first learned from the Egyptians. Tell us, ye learned antiquaries, where on all these temples, and in all the records which they have left us, is there any trace of the Ten Commandments?

And yet Egypt is connected very intimately, in history at least, with the birth of our religion. No other country, except Palestine, figures so largely in the Bible. Abraham went down into Egypt. Here came the sons of Jacob to buy corn, and found Joseph ruling in the house of Pharaoh. And hither centuries later fled the virgin mother with her child from the wrath of Herod, fulfilling the prediction, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."

But Religion – the Divine wisdom which at once instructs and saves mankind – came not from the valley of the Nile. Abraham and Jacob and Moses saw the Pyramids standing just as we see them now, but they did not point them to the true God. That knowledge came from a higher source. "History," says Bunsen, "was born on that night when Moses, with the law of God in his heart, led the people of Israel out of Egypt." And not History only, but Religion then came to a new birth, that was to be the herald of new and better hopes, and of a higher civilization than was known to the ancient world.

CHAPTER IV

THE EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE

The valley of the Nile is one vast sepulchre. Tombs and temples! Temples and tombs! This is the sum of the monuments which ancient Egypt has left us. Probably no equal portion of the earth's surface was ever so populous, at once with the living and the dead. It is but a narrow strip of territory – a line of green between two deserts; and yet on this mere ribbon of Africa lived the millions that made one of the most populous and powerful of ancient empires. They were fed by the marvellous fertility of the Nile valley, till they stood upon it almost as thick as the ranks of corn that waved around them: and here, when life was ended, they found a resting-place in the bosom of the earth that nourished them, on which they slept as children on a mother's breast. This strip of earth, long and narrow like a grave, has been the sepulchre of nations. Here the myriads of Egypt's ancient reigns – from the time of Menes – through the long line of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies – the generations that built the Pyramids and those that came after – laid themselves down to sleep in the great valley. Thus the very dust of Egypt was made up of the dust of ancient Egyptians.

But this was only the lot of the common people, to mingle their dust with common clay – their tomb the common earth, their end to be exhaled into the common air, or to reappear in other natural forms, living in plants, blooming in flowers, or in broad-leaved palms, casting a shadow on the earth from which they sprung. But for her great ones, more enduring monuments were reared to guard their dust and perpetuate their names. No people, ancient or modern, ever lavished so much on these sacred and pious memorials. They expended more on the tombs of the dead than on the houses of the living, for they reasoned that the latter were but temporary dwellings, while the former were everlasting habitations. The kings of Egypt cared more for great tombs than great palaces, and they reared such mausoleums as the earth never saw before. The Pyramids were their tombs, and the mountains were hollowed into royal sepulchres. The rock tombs of Beni-Hassan are cut in the side of the hills. The barren mountain that looks off upon the great Libyan desert, is honeycombed with vast and silent halls of the dead. At Thebes the traveller, ascending from the Nile, winds his way among hills of sand into a valley of desolation. The summits around are not covered with pines like our own darkly wooded hills, nor do even the rocks gather moss – but all is bare and desolate. The desert has overflowed the earth like a sea, and not a shrub nor a blade of grass has survived the universal deluge. Yet here where not a living thing can be found, has been discovered underground the most remarkable series of tombs which exists. A whole mountain is pierced with deep excavations. Passages open into its rocky sides, running many hundred feet into the bowels of the earth, and branching off into recesses like side chapels. These Halls of Death are like kings' palaces, with stately chambers broad and high, whose sides and ceilings are covered with hieroglyphics and illustrative symbols.

A fact so remarkable as this, that the architecture of a great empire which has built the most colossal structures in the world, has this tomblike character, must have a meaning. The Egyptians were a very religious people. They were not a gay and thoughtless race, like some of their Asiatic and European neighbors. There is something grave even in their faces, as seen in ancient statues and monuments. Their very architecture had this heavy and solemn character. These colossal temples, these silent sphinxes, seem oppressed with some great mystery which they cannot reveal. These tombs show that the Egyptian mind was full of the idea of death, and of another life. The Egyptians were not Atheists, nor Sadducees. They believed devoutly in God, and in a life to come.

How strongly the idea of another life had taken hold of the Egyptian mind is evident from the symbols in their religion. The symbol most frequently employed is that of the scarabæus– or beetle – the image of which appears everywhere, which by analogy teaches that life, in passing through death, may be born to a new life. The beetle lays its eggs in the slime of the Nile; it buries them in mud, which it works into a ball, and rolls over and over, back to the edge of the desert, and buries in sand. There its work is ended: nature does the rest. Out of this grave comes in time a resurrection, and life is born of death. The ostrich eggs hung up in mosques, have the same symbolical meaning. The ostrich buries its eggs in the sand, and nature, that kind mother which watches over all life, gives them being. Thus is conveyed the same idea as in the analogy of the chrysalis and the butterfly.

Studying the religious faith of the Egyptians a little more closely, we see that they believed not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the resurrection of the body. The doctrine taught by Paul, was long before taught by the priests of Egypt. Their tombs were not merely memorials of those who had ceased to live, but resting-places for the bodies of those whose spirits were absent but would some day return. For this, bodies were embalmed with religious care; they were buried in tombs hewn out of the solid rock, laid away in Pyramids, or in caverns hollowed out of the heart of the mountains. There, embedded in the eternal rocks, locked up with the bars of the everlasting hills, it seemed that their remains would rest secure till the morning of the resurrection day.

Further, they believed not only in immortality and in resurrection, but also in retribution. The soul that was to pass into another life, was to go into it to be judged. There it was to be called to account for the deeds done in the body. Even the funeral rites indicated how strong was the belief of a judgment to come for all who departed this life. After the bodies were embalmed, they were borne in solemn procession to the Nile (most of the tombs being on the western bank), or to a sacred lake, across which they were to be ferried. (Did not this suggest to later Roman mythologists the river Styx, and the boatman Charon who conveyed departed souls to the gloomy shades of Pluto?) As the funeral procession arrived at the borders of the lake, it paused till certain questions were answered, on which it depended whether the dead might receive burial: or should be condemned to wander in darkness three thousand years. If it passed this ordeal, it moved forward, not to its everlasting repose, but to the Hall of Judgment, where Osiris sits upon his throne as the judge of all mankind. This scene is constantly represented in sculptures, in bas-reliefs, and in frescoes on the walls of tombs. In one of them a condemned wretch is driven away in the shape of a pig! (Was it here that Pythagoras, who studied in Egypt, obtained his doctrine of the transmigration of souls?) Before Osiris is the scribe, the recording angel, who keeps a faithful record of the deeds done in the body. A long line of judges – forty-two in number – sit arrayed as the final arbiters of his fate – each with his question, on the answer to which may depend the destiny of the departed soul.

The "Book of the Dead" (copies of which are still found wrapped up with mummies: several are in the British Museum) gives the answers to be made to these searching questions, and also the prayers to be offered, and the hymns that are to be sung, as the soul enters the gloomy shades of the under-world.

In this Egyptian doctrine of a future life there are Christian ideas. Some indeed will say that Egypt gave rather than received; that she was the mother of all learning and all wisdom in the ancient world; that the Greeks obtained their philosophy from her (for Plato as well as Pythagoras studied in Egypt); that the Eleusinian mysteries came from Africa; that Moses here found what he taught the Hebrews; and that even the Christian mysteries and the Christian faith came from the banks of the Nile.

There is certainly much food for reflection in this reappearance of certain religious ideas in different countries and under different forms. But there is a contrast as well as a resemblance. While the Hebrews learned so much from the Egyptians, it is very remarkable that they did not imbibe that strong faith in the reality of the invisible world, which lies at the foundation of religion. One would suppose that the Israelites, coming out of Egypt, would be full of these thoughts, and of the hopes and fears of a life to come. Yet in all the books of Moses, rarely, if ever, are these motives addressed to the Hebrews. The German critics argue from this that the Hebrews did not believe in another life. The late Dr. Edward Robinson, the distinguished Hebrew scholar, said that he could not find that doctrine in the Old Testament. Without admitting such an extreme view, it is certainly remarkable that that idea is much less prominent in the Old Testament than in the New. It is not Moses, but Christ who has brought life and immortality to light.

But the Egyptian doctrine of a future life, while very curious and interesting as a study of ancient belief, is utterly unsatisfying. The ideas are detached and fragmentary, and wholly without evidence or authority; they are merely the crude fancies of mythology, and not the precise teachings of Revelation. And so in all the tombs and temples of Egypt there is nothing which can relieve the doubts of a troubled mind, or the sorrows of a heavy heart.

I have had some sober thoughts while floating on the bosom of the Nile. We cannot but see the world through our own eyes and through our moods of mind. To those who have left their dead beyond the sea, foreign travel has many sad and lonely hours. The world seems cold and empty, and even the most religious mind is apt to be haunted with gloomy thoughts. This is not a mood of mind peculiar to atheists and unbelievers. Many devout men, in seasons of mental depression, are tortured with doubts whether, after all, their religious faith is not a delusion and a dream.

And so many dark and bitter questionings come to me here in this land of sepulchres. I have come to Egypt to learn something of the wisdom of the Egyptians. Tell me then, ye tombs and temples and pyramids, about God; tell me about the life to come! But the Pyramids speak not; and the Sphinx still looks towards the East, to watch for the rising sun, but is voiceless and mute. This valley of the Nile speaks of nothing but death. From end to end its rock-ribbed hills are filled with tombs. Yet what do they all teach the anxious and troubled heart of man? Nothing! All these hills are silent. Not a sound, or even an echo, comes from these dark sepulchres. No voice of hope issues out of the caverns hollowed in the bosom of the hills. The hard granite of the tombs itself is not more deaf to the cry of human anguish, or the voice of supplication.