I must try and make this clear to you with a few pictures.
Suppose that you were Champollion and that you were reading
an old papyrus which told the story of a farmer who lived
somewhere along the banks of the river Nile.
Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw.
"Very well," you said, "that means, of course, that the farmer went out and cut a tree down." Most likely you
had guessed correctly.
Next you took another page of hieroglyphics.
They told the story of a queen who had lived to be eighty-two
years old. Right in the middle of the text the same picture
occurred. That was very puzzling, to say the least. Queens do
not go about cutting down trees. They let other people do it for
them. A young queen may saw wood for the sake of exercise,
but a queen of eighty-two stays at home with her cat and her
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spinning wheel. Yet, the picture was there. The ancient priest
who drew it must have placed it there for a definite purpose.
What could he have meant?
That was the riddle which Champollion finally solved.
He discovered that the Egyptians were the first people to use
what we call "phonetic writing."
Like most other words which express a scientific idea, the word
"phonetic" is of Greek origin. It means the "science of the sound which is made by our speech." You have seen the Greek word
"phone," which means the voice, before. It occurs in our word
"telephone," the machine which carries the voice to a distant point.
Ancient Egyptian was "phonetic" and it set man free from the narrow limits of that sign language which in some primitive form
had been used ever since the cave-dweller began to scratch
pictures of wild animals upon the walls of his home.
Now let us return for a moment to the little fellow with his saw
who suddenly appeared in the story of the old queen. Evidently
he had something to do with a saw.
A "saw" is either a tool which you find in a carpenter shop or it means the past tense of the verb "to see."
This is what had happened to the word during the course of
many centuries.
First of all it had meant a man with a saw.
Then it came to mean the sound which we reproduce by the
three modern letters, s, a and w. In the end the original
meaning of carpentering was lost entirely and the picture
indicated the past tense of "to see."
A modern English sentence done into the images of ancient
Egypt will show you what I mean.
The
means either these two round objects in your head
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which allow you to see, or it means "I," the person who is talking or writing.
A
is either an animal which gathers honey and pricks
you in the finger when you try to catch it, or it represents to
verb "to be," which is pronounced the same way and which means to "exist." Again it may be the first part of a verb like
"be-come" or "be-have." In this case the bee is followed by a which represents the sound which we find in the word
"leave" or "leaf." Put your "bee" and your "leaf" together and you have the two sounds which make the verb "bee-leave" or
"believe" as we write it nowadays.
The "eye" you know all about.
Finally you get a picture which looks like a giraffe.
It is
a giraffe, and it is part of the old sign language, which has been continued wherever it seemed most convenient.
Therefore you get the following sentence, "I believe I saw a giraffe."
This system, once invented, was developed during thousands of
years.
Gradually the most important figures came to mean single
letters or short sounds like "fu" or "em" or "dee" or "zee," or as we write them, f and m and d and z. And with the help of these,
the Egyptians could write anything they wanted upon every
conceivable subject, and could preserve the experience of one
generation for the benefit of the next without the slightest
difficulty.
That, in a very general way, is what Champollion taught us after
the exhausting search which killed him when he was a young
man.
That too, is the reason why today we know Egyptian history
better than that of any other ancient country.
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THE LAND OF THE LIVING AND THE
LAND OF THE DEAD
The History of Man is the record of a hungry creature in search
of food.
Wherever food was plentiful and easily gathered, thither man
travelled to make his home.
The fame of the Nile valley must have spread at an early date.
From far and wide, wild people flocked to the banks of the river.
Surrounded on all sides by desert or sea, it was not easy to
reach these fertile fields and only the hardiest men and women
survived.
We do not know who they were. Some came from the interior of
Africa and had woolly hair and thick lips.
Others, with a yellowish skin, came from the desert of Arabia
and the broad rivers of western Asia.
They fought each other for the possession of this wonderful
land.
They built villages which their neighbors destroyed and they
rebuilt them with the bricks they had taken from other
neighbors whom they in turn had vanquished.
Gradually a new race developed. They called themselves "remi,"
which means simply "the Men." There was a touch of pride in this name and they used it in the same sense that we refer to
America as "God's own country."
Part of the year, during the annual flood of the Nile, they lived on small islands within a country which itself was cut off from
the rest of the world by the sea and the desert. No wonder that
these people were what we call "insular," and had the habits of villagers who rarely come in contact with their neighbors.
They liked their own ways best. They thought their own habits
and customs just a trifle better than those of anybody else. In
the same way, their own gods were considered more powerful
than the gods of other nations. They did not exactly despise
foreigners, but they felt a mild pity for them and if possible
they kept them outside of the Egyptian domains, lest their own
people be corrupted by "foreign notions."
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They were kind-hearted and rarely did anything that was cruel.
They were patient and in business dealings they were rather
indifferent Life came as an easy gift and they never became
stingy and mean like northern people who have to struggle for
mere existence.
When the sun arose above the blood-red horizon of the distant
desert, they went forth to till their fields. When the last rays of light had disappeared beyond the mountain ridges, they went to
bed.
They worked hard, they plodded and they bore whatever
happened with stolid unconcern and profound patience.
They believed that this life was but a short preface to a new
existence which began the moment Death had entered the
house. Until at last, the life of the future came to be regarded
as more important than the life of the present and the people of
Egypt turned their teeming land into one vast shrine for the
worship of the dead.
And as most of the papyrus-rolls of the ancient valley tell
stories of a religious nature we know with great accuracy just
what gods the Egyptians revered and how they tried to assure
all possible happiness and comfort to those who had entered
upon the eternal sleep. In the beginning each little village had
possessed a god of its own.
Often this god was supposed to reside in a queerly shaped
stone or in the branch of a particularly large tree. It was well to be good friends with him for he could do great harm and destroy
the harvest and prolong the period of drought until the people
and the cattle had all died of thirst. Therefore the villages made him presents--offered him things to eat or a bunch of flowers.
When the Egyptians went forth to fight their enemies the god
must needs be taken along, until he became a sort of battle
flag around which the people rallied in time of danger.
But when the country grew older and better roads had been
built and the Egyptians had begun to travel, the old "fetishes,"
as such chunks of stone and wood were called, lost their
importance and were thrown away or were left in a neglected
corner or were used as doorsteps or chairs.
Their place was taken by new gods who were more powerful
than the old ones had been and who represented those forces
of nature which influenced the lives of the Egyptians of the
entire valley.
First among these was the Sun which makes all things grow.
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Next came the
river Nile which
tempered the
heat of the day
and brought
rich deposits of
clay to refresh
the fields and
make them
fertile.
Then there was
the kindly
Moon which at
night rowed
her little boat
across the arch
of heaven and
there was
Thunder and
there was
Lightning and
there were any
number of
things which
could make life
happy or
miserable
according to
their pleasure
and desire.
Ancient man, entirely at the mercy of these forces of nature,
could not get rid of them as easily as we do when we plant
lightning rods upon our houses or build reservoirs which keep us
alive during the summer months when there is no rain.
On the contrary they formed an intimate part of his daily life--
they accompanied him from the moment he was put into his
cradle until the day that his body was prepared for eternal rest.
Neither could he imagine that such vast and powerful
phenomena as a bolt of lightning or the flood of a river were
mere impersonal things. Some one--somewhere--must be their
master and must direct them as the engineer directs his engine
or a captain steers his ship.
A God-in-Chief was therefore created, like the commanding
general of an army.
A number of lower officers were placed at his disposal.
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Within their own territory each one could act independently.
In grave matters, however, which affected the happiness of all
the people, they must take orders from their master.
The Supreme Divine Ruler of the land of Egypt was called Osiris,
and all the little Egyptian children knew the story of his
wonderful life.
Once upon a time, in the valley of the Nile, there lived a king
called Osiris.
He was a good man who taught his subjects how to till their
fields and who gave his country just laws. But he had a bad
brother whose name was Seth.
Now Seth envied Osiris because he was so virtuous and one day
he invited him to dinner and afterwards he said that he would
like to show him something. Curious Osiris asked what it was
and Seth said that it was a funnily shaped coffin which fitted
one like a suit of clothes. Osiris said that he would like to try it.
So he lay down in the coffin but no sooner was he inside when
bang!--Seth shut the lid. Then he called for his servants and
ordered them to throw the coffin into the Nile.
Soon the news of his terrible deed spread throughout the land.
Isis, the wife of Osiris, who had loved her husband very dearly,
went at once to the banks of the Nile, and after a short while
the waves threw the coffin upon the shore. Then she went forth
to tell her son Horus, who ruled in another land, but no sooner
had she left than Seth, the wicked brother, broke into the
palace and cut the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces.
When Isis returned, she discovered what Seth had done. She
took the fourteen pieces of the dead body and sewed them
together and then Osiris came back to life and reigned for ever
and ever as king of the lower world to which the souls of men
must travel after they have left the body.
As for Seth, the Evil One, he tried to escape, but Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, who had been warned by his mother, caught
him and slew him.
This story of a faithful wife and a wicked brother and a dutiful
son who avenged his father and the final victory of virtue over
wickedness formed the basis of the religious life of the people
of Egypt.
Osiris was regarded as the god of all living things which
seemingly die in the winter and yet return to renewed existence
the next spring. As ruler of the Life Hereafter, he was the final judge of the acts of men, and woe unto him who had been cruel
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and unjust
and had
oppressed the
weak.
As for the
world of the
departed
souls, it was
situated
beyond the
high
mountains of
the west
(which was
also the home
of the young
Nile) and
when an
Egyptian
wanted to say
that someone
had died, he
said that he
"had gone
west."
Isis shared
the honors
and the duties
of Osiris with
him. Their son
Horus, who
was worshipped as the god of the Sun (hence the word
"horizon," the place where the sun sets) became the first of a new line of Egyptian kings and all the Pharaohs of Egypt had
Horus as their middle name.
Of course, each little city and every small village continued to
worship a few divinities of their own. But generally speaking, all the people recognized the sublime power of Osiris and tried to
gain his favor.
This was no easy task, and led to many strange customs. In the
first place, the Egyptians came to believe that no soul could
enter into the realm of Osiris without the possession of the
body which had been its place of residence in this world.
Whatever happened, the body must be preserved after death,
and it must be given a permanent and suitable home. Therefore
as soon as a man had died, his corpse was embalmed. This was
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a difficult and
complicated
operation which
was performed
by an official
who was half
doctor and half
priest, with the
help of an
assistant whose
duty it was to
make the
incision through
which the chest
could be filled
with cedar-tree
pitch and myrrh
and cassia. This
assistant
belonged to a
special class of
people who
were counted
among the most
despised of
men. The
Egyptians
thought it a
terrible thing to
commit acts of
violence upon a
human being,
whether dead or living, and only the lowest of the low could be
hired to perform this unpopular task.
Afterwards the priest took the body again and for a period of
ten weeks he allowed it to be soaked in a solution of natron
which was brought for this purpose from the distant desert of
Libya. Then the body had become a "mummy" because it was filled with "Mumiai" or pitch. It was wrapped in yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a beautifully
decorated wooden coffin, ready to be removed to its final home
in the western desert.
The grave itself was a little stone room in the sand of the
desert or a cave in a hill-side.
After the coffin had been placed in the center the little room
was well supplied with cooking utensils and weapons and
statues (of clay or wood) representing bakers and butchers who
were expected to wait upon their dead master in case he
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needed anything. Flutes and fiddles were added to give the
occupant of the grave a chance to while away the long hours
which he must spend in this "house of eternity."
Then the roof was covered with sand and the dead Egyptian was
left to the peaceful rest of eternal sleep.
But the desert is full of wild creatures, hyenas and wolves, and
they dug their way through the wooden roof and the sand and
ate up the mummy.
This was a terrible thing, for then the soul was doomed to
wander forever and suffer agonies of a man without a home. To
assure the corpse all possible safety a low wall of brick was
built around the grave and the open space was filled with sand
and gravel. In this way a low artificial hill was made which
protected the mummy against wild animals and robbers.
Then one day, an Egyptian who had just buried his Mother, of
whom he had been particularly fond, decided to give her a
monument that should surpass anything that had ever been
built in the valley of the Nile.
He gathered his serfs and made them build an artificial
mountain that could be seen for miles around. The sides of this
hill he covered with a layer of bricks that the sand might not be blown away.
People liked the novelty of the idea.
Soon they were trying to outdo each other and the graves rose
twenty and thirty and forty feet above the ground.
At last a rich nobleman ordered a burial chamber made of solid
stone.
On top of the actual grave where the mummy rested, he
constructed a pile of bricks which rose several hundred feet into the air. A small passage-way gave entrance to the vault and
when this passage was closed with a heavy slab of granite the
mummy was safe from all intrusion.
The King of course could not allow one of his subjects to outdo
him in such a matter. He was the most powerful man of all
Egypt who lived in the biggest house and therefore he was
entitled to the best grave.
What others had done in brick he could do with the help of more
costly materials.
Pharaoh sent his officers far and wide to gather workmen. He
constructed roads. He built barracks in which the workmen could
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live and sleep (you may see those barracks this very day). Then
he set to work and made himself a grave which was to endure
for all time.
We call this great pile of masonry a "pyramid."
The origin of the word is a curious one.
When the Greeks visited Egypt the Pyramids were already
several thousand years old.
Of course the
Egyptians took
their guests into
the desert to
see these
wondrous sights
just as we take
foreigners to
gaze at the
Wool-worth
Tower and
Brooklyn Bridge.
The Greek
guest, lost in
admiration,
waved his hands
and asked what
the strange
mountains might
be.
His guide
thought that he
referred to the
extraordinary
height and said
"Yes, they are
very high
indeed."
The Egyptian
word for height
was "pir-em-us."
The Greek must have thought that this was the name of the
whole structure and giving it a Greek ending he called it a
"pyramis."
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Egyptian word when we talk of the stone graves along the
banks of the Nile.
The biggest of these many pyramids, which was built fifty
centuries ago, was five hundred feet high.
At the base it was seven hundred and fifty-five feet wide.
It covered more than thirteen acres of desert, which is three
times as much space as that occupied by the church of Saint
Peter, the largest edifice of the Christian world.
During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were used
to carry the stones from the distant peninsula of Sinai--to ferry them across the Nile (how they ever managed to do this we do
not understand)--to drag them halfway across the desert and
finally hoist them into their correct position.
But so well did Pharaoh's architects and engineers perform their
task that the narrow passage-way which leads to the royal tomb
in the heart of the pyramid has never yet been pushed out of
shape by the terrific weight of those thousands and thousands
of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides.
THE MAKING OF A STATE
Nowadays we all are members of a "state."
We may be Frenchmen or Chinamen or Russians; we may live in
the furthest corner of Indonesia (do you know where that is?),
but in some way or other we belong to that curious combination
of people which is called the "state."
It does not matter whether we recognize a king or an emperor
or a president as our ruler. We are born and we die as a small
part of this large Whole and no one can escape this fate.
The "state," as a matter of fact, is quite a recent invention.
The earliest inhabitants of the world did not know what it was.
Every family lived and hunted and worked and died for and by
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itself. Sometimes it happened that a few of these families, for
the sake of greater protection against the wild animals and
against other wild people, formed a loose alliance which was
called a tribe or a clan. But as soon as the danger was past,
these groups of people acted again by and for themselves and if
the weak could not defend t