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Another random document with
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 The object of these pages is to present to the reader the thoughts
on Egypt, as it was and as it is, which arose in the author’s mind
during a tour he made last winter through the country. Among these
thoughts, as I intimated at the beginning of this chapter, a prominent
place is occupied by chronological questions, for the dates of early
Egyptian history do not accord with those of the popularly-received
system. It therefore becomes necessary to revert to the grounds of
that system, as well as to examine and ascertain the particulars of
the chronology of Egypt.
In this indispensable department of primæval history it is possible
that we may have been misled by a very natural misapprehension as
to the character of the earlier portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. We
read them as if they were addressed to ourselves, and as if their
object was historical. These are, both of them, erroneous and
misleading ideas. It is evident, on the face of the documents, that
their writers had in view no readers excepting those for whose
immediate behoof they were composed, and no objects excepting
religion and patriotism. Their aim was to form the Israelites into a
people by the instrumentality of a Code, sanctioned and enforced by
religion. The writings, therefore, necessarily lay a foundation for the
religion, give an exposition of it, and set forth the motives for its
observance. The Code is the point of view from which the religion,
and the formation of the people that from which the Code, is to be
regarded. History is no more their object than science. They do, of
course, contain a part, and that a most important part, of the history
of mankind; for, in carrying out their aim, they give much of the
history of a people that was destined to have a great, and
permanent, and ever-growing effect on the world. But it is important
to observe that even this they contain only incidentally. To us both
their religious aims, and their incidental history, give them a value
which cannot be over-estimated. We shall, however, only fall into
mistakes if we lose sight of their primary, limited, Hebrew, religious
purpose, and regard them as universal history.
This is a question of broad as well as of minute criticism—of the
interpretation of the whole as well as of particulars. Are these
Scriptures to be regarded as containing the religion and the history,
limited to the point of view of the religion, of one of the smallest of all
people, or as containing the whole primæval history of man, in such
a sense that nothing but what appears to be in harmony with what
has come to be their popular interpretation, can be taken into
consideration? It was for many ages an unavoidable mistake to
entertain respecting them the latter assumption. (That some of the
elements of Hebrew religious thought were subsequently taken up
into the religious thought of a very considerable portion of mankind
does not affect the question immediately before us.) It maybe,
precisely, the attempt to maintain this misconception of their nature
which is now causing so much confusion of thought and ill-feeling. If
regarded in their true light, no documents of the old world are more
precious to us historically (I am not speaking of them in any other
sense now); for, to refer to that which is the chief concern of man, if
the great lesson of history is to teach us that it has itself no meaning,
purpose, or value, excepting so far as it is the story of the intellectual
and moral growth of the race, and that this double growth is the
paramount object of national and of individual life, then how precious
and how luminous a portion of history do these documents become!
But this value is very much lessened, and this light obscured, by
the determination to find in them, not a part, but the whole of
primæval history. The civilization of Egypt, which reaches back into
so remote a past that the Pyramids were monuments of hoar
antiquity when Abraham saw them, and the civilization—perhaps
contemporary with the date of the Pyramids—which existed on the
banks of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Yankse Kiang, must be
made harmoniously to find a place by the side of what is recorded in
the Hebrew Scriptures. So must the mythology, and the moral and
intellectual aptitudes of the Aryan race of man. So must also the
knowledge to which we have attained of the history of our globe
itself, and of the succession of life upon it. This process has already
been passed through with respect to the discoveries of astronomy.
Against them there was a long and fierce struggle. At last everybody
admitted both that what astronomers taught might be believed, and
that the Hebrew Scriptures did not teach astronomy. There is no
reason for confining to astronomy the rule that was established in its
favour. It must be extended so as to include our knowledge of the
greatness and the remoteness of Egyptian civilization, and every
other kind of knowledge. We need not, and we must not, so interpret
the Hebrew Scriptures as to reject on their authority, or even to feel
repugnance to accept, any clearly-established facts. To make this
use of them is to wrest them to a purpose for which it is clear they
were never intended.
Their historical value to ourselves is only an incident and accident
of their designed purpose: that was to teach to the Israelites their
code, and to give them motives for observing it (which has come to
be to us a part of history), and not to teach history to us. The idea of
history, taking the word in the meaning it has for us, did not exist
then. It could not, indeed, have existed then, for everything has its
own place and time, and the time for history had not come then.
First, the seed is deposited in the ground, then comes the tender
shoot, next the stem and blades, after that the plant flowers; last of
all comes the full corn in the ripe ear. Those early days were the time
when the materials were in many places being collected, out of
which we have to construct human history. It is fortunate for us that
in those first times men did not forestall the idea of history: that
would have prevented their attending singly to what they were
themselves doing, and to the thoughts that were at work in their own
minds.
 CHAPTER XI.
GOING UP TO THE TOP OF THE GREAT
PYRAMID.

How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low:
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.—Shakspeare.

Of course you listen to anything people have to say on a subject

about which you are at the moment interested. Here are some
specimens of what I heard about the Pyramids, when I was on the
point of visiting them. A gentleman, who had that day returned from
making the ascent, was, as he sat at the table d’hôte, overflowing
with his impressions. His complexion and voice were somewhat
womanly. As might have been expected, he strongly advised that
everyone should attempt what he had himself just accomplished.
There was, however, some novelty in the advantage, he thought,
would result from the ascent, as well as in the logical process by
which it was to be attained. ‘Go up,’ his words were, ‘go up by all
means. The religious effects are very good. Elevated to so enormous
a height above the earth, on so vast and imperishable a structure,
you feel deeply and profitably the littleness, the feebleness of man.’
I asked the owner of a New York dry-goods store, who was
rushing over the world for the purpose of adding to the stock of his
ideas—a very creditable effort in a man of his antecedents and
occupation, and who was now half-gray—what he thought of the
Pyramids? ‘Well,’ was his reply, ‘they are a matter biggish. But I don’t
think them much, for we can have just as good Pyramids in Central
Park, New York, if we choose to spend the money to have them. A
Pyramid is nothing but dollars. How many dollars do you say one
would cost? Well, we have got all these, and many more, to spare.
We have got the Pyramids in our pockets, and can set them up any
day we please.’
These are specimens (and additional instances might be given) of
the ideas of people who are eminently estimable, and perfectly
contented with themselves and with the world. Indeed, in holding and
expressing them, they must think that their eyes are not quite as
other men’s; that they can penetrate a little further beyond the
surface of things. Yet one meets with many a man quite as
estimable, though perhaps not quite so contented with himself and
with the world, who would be disposed to ask what good would his
life do him, if told that he must swop ideas with them. The prospect
would be as little attractive to him as that of the exchange of his
religion for the creed of an ancient Briton, or Cherokee Indian. But
variety is pleasant; and the world is a big place with plenty of room
for honest folk of all sorts.
An acquaintance (I trust he will allow me to quote him here), in
whose mind at the moment artistic must have preponderated over
historical associations, standing unawed, and even unmoved, in front
of the Great Pyramid, relieved his mind to me, by giving utterance to
the following piece of honest profanity:—
‘I can’t bring myself to take the slightest interest in these Pyramids.
They don’t possess one principle, one element, one feature of
architecture. They are nothing at all but heaps of stones.’
On my first visit to the Pyramids of Gizeh it was too windy for
anyone but an Arab to think of making the ascent. On my second
visit the day was all one could wish, and so four of our party went up
to the top of the Great Pyramid. It was my fifty-fourth birthday. This
seemed to myself rather a reason for not making the effort. My
climbing-days were done. But my young friend, late from Harrow,
and great in athletics, thought differently. ‘You mustn’t give in yet,’ he
urged. ‘You must go up. It is what everyone ought to do. What is the
use of having come all this way if you don’t go up? You will be sorry
afterwards if you don’t. One would come a long way to have a
chance of doing it.’ As this was very much like what one used to
think oneself some thirty, or so, years since, the exhortation seemed
reasonable and good. We ought to endeavour to keep ourselves
young in body as well as in mind. We ought not to give in by
anticipation. It will be time enough when we can’t help ourselves.
And so I went to the top.
By the way a party for travel in Egypt, if pleasure, not work, is the
first object, may be a large one, and need not be composed entirely
of historians and philosophers. All liberal pursuits and reasonable
ways of looking at things may be represented advantageously. A
naturalist and a geologist are almost indispensable. A member of the
Ethnological Society might, at times, turn up worth his salt. A
Liverpool, or Manchester, man whose ideas are of commerce,
manufactures, and machinery; of the value of things, and how to do
things, would often serviceably recall speculation to the standard of
present utility. But by all means have a young fellow late from
Harrow, and still great in athletics. He is always to the front, like a
cork to the surface of the water. He is never afraid of work, or of
roughing it. He is always good-tempered and merry. Always glad to
hear what has anything in it; is impatient of twaddle, and can’t stand
assumption. Some day he will himself be an Egyptologer, or
geologist, or something of the kind. At present he is tolerant, and
allows these things to those who like them. What he likes is a
rousing gallop on the Sheik’s horse, a girl that has no nonsense in
her, a champagne luncheon, a good cigar. Some things, and some
chaps he thinks slow, but the general rule is ‘all right.’ A Nile party is
the better for this ingredient. We mediævalists must not be over-
reasonable. He will help us a little to keep this tendency in check.
Besides, we were once young ourselves, while our friend was never,
though we all hope he may live to be, an old fogie.
Four of us went to the top together. But place aux dames, and no
young lady, from the days of Cheops, better deserved the first place
than she who, on an early day in January, 1871, ascended his
Pyramid with eye as bright, and foot as sure, as a gazelle’s. If he still
haunts the mighty monument in which he was laid, after having bent
his people to its erection for fifty years, he must have thought, as the
Lily of the North stood on its summit, that he was well repaid.
 For ne’er did Grecian chisel trace
A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace
Of finer form, or lovelier face.
A foot more light, a step more true,
Ne’er from the heath-flower dashed the dew;
E’en the light hare-bell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread.

My young friend, late from Harrow, and great in athletics, was, of

course, one of the four.
And so was an older friend of mine, with whom and another lad, in
the year 1836, each of the three being then seventeen years old, I
had gone, I believe, the first open-boat cruise on our home rivers.
We started from Bedford and went to York and Hull, and back again,
700 miles in an open boat, pulling it all the way ourselves, and lying
down in it at night to sleep, accoutred as we were in Jersey frock and
canvas. During the whole expedition we cooked our meals
ourselves. From that boat we had looked forward into the unknown
world before us: I can still recall the anticipations, visions, and
resolves of that time. Now, from the top of the Pyramid of Cheops,
we looked back on our course, so far, through the world. Well, just
like other people, we had had each of us to make some discoveries
for himself, and to pay for his experience. But the fight had not been
always against either of us. On the whole we had not found it a bad
world. We were glad, after thirty years of the chanceful life-battle, to
meet again, on the summit of the Great Pyramid, if not quite
unscathed, yet not crippled. I suppose we each thought that the time
to come could not be as pleasant as the interval had been that
separated our two excursions.
The Great Pyramid is built of extremely hard and compact
nummulitic limestone. The third was cased, at all events, to half its
height, perhaps completely, with enormous blocks of granite. A few
are still in their places, but most of them have been thrown to the
ground. A small portion of the external casing at the top of the
Second Pyramid is still uninjured. It is of so pale and fine a limestone
that it looks as if it were of polished white marble.
 I found the best way of getting an impressive idea of the enormous
magnitude of these Pyramids was to place myself in the centre of
one side, and to look up. The eye then travels over all the courses of
stone from the very bottom to the apex, which appears to pierce and
penetrate the blue arch above. This way of looking at the Great
Pyramid—perhaps it is a way which exaggerates to the eye its
magnitude unfairly—makes it look Alpine in height, while it produces
the strange effect just noticed.
While making the ascent, the Hakem of the Arab tribe, which
supplies guides and assistance to travellers, took the opportunity of
a pause for breath to press upon me the purchase of some old coins.
I told him I would look at them when we had done with the Pyramid.
‘I am satisfied:’ he replied; ‘an Englishman’s word is as good as his
money.’
Many people shrink from ascending the Pyramid from a fear of
becoming dizzy and confused on seeing, as they fancy they must,
that they are up so high without anything to hold on by. This sight
need never be seen. You are going up against the face of the
mountain; attend then to what you are doing. Look where you are
putting your feet, which you must do, each step being three feet
high, more or less and you will never see once, from the bottom to
the top, how high you are above the earth, or that you have no
supports, except when you turn round on sitting down to get breath,
and when you reach the summit. The same is true to a great extent
even of the descent, although your back is then turned to the
mountain. Attend to what you are about—that is, to the place where
you are going to set your foot—and there will be nothing at all to
make you dizzy.
One of the exhibitions of the place is that of an Arab climbing from
the bottom to the top and coming down again, in what appears to the
spectators, an incredibly short space of time. The charge for the
performance is a few francs. As they are slim, long-legged, active
fellows, they are well-adapted for this kind of thing. One who was
proud of what he could do in this way was challenged by my young
friend to a foot-race for half-a-crown. There was not an Arab present
but thought it would be a hollow thing. It was not a hollow thing at all.
But their man it was who came in second, Harrow winning by a few
yards.
 CHAPTER XII.
LUNCHEON AT THE PYRAMIDS—KÊF.

Mine eye hath caught new pleasures

Whilst the landscape round it measures.—Milton.

On our first visit to the Pyramids we had our luncheon in the large
granite tomb a little below, and to the south-east of the Sphinx. One
feels that there is an incongruity, a kind almost of profanation, in
using a tomb, particularly such a tomb, for such a purpose. Its
massiveness, at all events, makes you conscious of a kind of
degeneracy in the present day. A sense of unworthiness and
littleness comes over you. What business have we, who send our
dead to heaven, and have done with them, to disturb the repose of
those on whose sepulchres a fortune was spent, if not by their
relatives, at all events by themselves? But on this occasion there
was little choice. Outside the sun was scorching, and the wind was
high, and the only alternative was the hotel. But that was impossible:
to be shut up in a hideous, plastered, naked room of yesterday,
within a few yards of the Great Pyramid. One would rather go without
one’s luncheon for six months together than have to bear the stings
of conscience for having so outraged the memory of Cheops and
Chephren. And so we took our luncheon that day in the tomb of one
of the great officers of the court of those old times.
It was formed entirely of enormous blocks and monolithic piers of
polished granite. I do not know of how many chambers it consisted,
for being considerably below the level of the surrounding sand-drift,
and the roof having been entirely removed, a few hours’ wind must
always completely fill and obliterate it. The Arabs then have to clear
it out again. When we were there four chambers were open. These
are all long narrow apartments. The one by which we entered runs
from west to east. At right angles to this are two other apartments,
their axes being from north to south. The fourth we saw was at right
angles to the north end of these two parallel chambers. It was in the
southern extremity of the westernmost of the two parallel chambers
that our party took their places. The comestibles were laid on a cloth
spread on the sand, with which the floor, to the depth of some
inches, was covered; the party reclined on the sand around, or sat
on blocks of granite arranged for seats. The hungry Arabs perched
themselves on the brink of the tomb, waiting for the fragments of the
feast, like vultures. The pert popping of the champagne corks again
disturbed ones sense of the fitness of things.
How was it possible to be there, and not feel the genius loci? The
whole of this edge of the desert, from Gizeh to the Faioum, is one
vast Necropolis. The old primæval monarchy lies buried here; at
Gizeh, Sakkara, Dashour, Abusseir, and throughout all the spaces
between and beyond, to the Faioum. No other empire has been so
buried.
In this wide field of the dead how much of early thought and
feeling, and life is storied. How much contemporary history in wood
and stone, in earthenware, and glass, and paint. Contemporary
history—not history composed, heaven save the mark! centuries
after the events, often by authors (sometimes truly the authors of all
they tell) who did not understand their own time, often merely for
bread and cheese;—not composed twentieth-hand from writings
which, even at their original source and fountain-head, were the work
of men who were not agents in what they endeavoured to record,
and who, not knowing truly the events, their causes, or their
consequences, were but ill qualified to write the record;—not
composed when the feelings and ways of thinking of the time were
no longer living things, but had died out, and other thoughts and
feelings come in their place, and when what the writer had to
construct had become obscure by party prejudice in politics and
religion, and by social misunderstandings. Nothing of this kind is
here. What is here is contemporary history, presented in such a form
that it is the actual pressure and embodiment of the heart and mind
of each individual. Here are the occupations he delighted in, the
sentiments that stirred him, the business that was the business of his
life, the clothes he wore, the furniture he used, the forms religious
thought had assumed in his mind, the forms social arrangements
had assumed around him. No people have ever so written their
history. Here is a biography of each man as he knew himself. Here
every man is a Boswell to himself. It is a nation’s life individually
photographed in granite.
We sat after luncheon taking our kêf, apparently absorbed in the
contemplation of the little fantastic wreaths of cloud formed by our
cigars. But the few remarks that were made showed that the
thoughts of most of us were occupied in resuscitating the past, and
repeopling the sacred terrain around with the grand impressive
ceremonies and funeral processions of five thousand years back.
What a scene must this have been then. The mountains—for that is
the meaning of the Pyramids—not rugged and dilapidated as now,
but cased with polished stone, each with its temple in front of it. The
many smaller Pyramids that have now disappeared, or are only seen
as mounds of rubbish, then acting as foils to their giant brethren.
Great Pyramids reaching all along the foot of the hills as far as the
eye could see towards the south: some of these still figure in the
landscape. The Sphinx was standing clear of sand with a temple
between his paws. Everything was orderly, bright, and splendid. The
dark red granite portals of the thousand houses of those, who slept
in the city of the dead, were standing out conspicuous upon the
sober limestone area, unchequered by a plant, unstained by a
lichen. The black basalt causeways traversed the green plain from
the silver river to the Pyramid plateau. The whole scene was alive
with those, who were visiting, and honouring, the dead, and
preparing their own last, earthly resting-places. Above all was spread
out the azure field of the Egyptian sky.

The word kêf is used everywhere throughout the East, from

Constantinople to Cairo, to convey an idea, that is not European. It is
the idea of sensational comfort combined with mental repose,
produced by the narcotic leaf, when used under circumstances,
where the comfort and the repose are felt. There is no kêf in its use
as you walk or drive, or even talk with the usual effort and purpose.
You must be seated, and in a kiosk, or garden, or some pleasant
place, where the entourage feeds the fancy through the eye,
spontaneously, with delightful, and soothing images. You must not be
urging the mind to exert itself. Conscious mental exertion, equally
with bodily, is destructive of kêf. The thoughts must be pleasant, and
they must come, too, of themselves, from surrounding objects.
Bodily sensations must be so lulled, and yet, at the same time, so
stimulated, as to be in perfect accord with the stream of thought, that
is languidly, and dreamily, floating through the mind.
 CHAPTER XIII.
ABYDOS.

Series longissima rerum

Per tot ducta viros antiquæ ab origine gentis.—Virgil.

In descending the river we stopped at Bellianéh to visit Abydos. It

was from Abydos, the primæval This, that Menes came, whose
name stands first on the list of Egyptian kings. From it also came the
dynasty that succeeded that of Menes. The great extent of cultivable
land—the valley here opening out to double its usual width—gave
space enough for a rich and populous state, the rulers of which
appeared to have overpowered their neighbours, and, by
consolidating their conquests, to have formed an enduring
monarchy. As the great preponderance of population and wealth was
thenceforth in the Delta and Lower Egypt, the head of the Delta
became the centre of gravity, and so, by natural causes, the centre
of affairs, and the site of the capital.
Was This, in Upper Egypt, the first seat of Egyptian power, and if
so, how came it to be so? These are questions of much interest, the
important bearing of which on early Egyptian history has been
indicated already.
The landing-place at Bellianéh is overshadowed by a grove of
palms, the crowns of which are tenanted by turtle-doves. Among the
palms we saw that the ground was covered with crude bricks, lately
moulded, and going through their first stage of desiccation. We were
soon surrounded by a crowd of bare-legged idlers from the town,
most of whom were boys.
We had the day before despatched a telegram to the Governor of
Bellianéh to request him to have donkeys in readiness for our party.
The telegram, however, had not arrived; we, therefore, sent into the
town to collect the beasts our party would require. Before long they
came; but most of them were ill able to carry even their own wasted
weight. Few had bridles, or anything that could have been mistaken
for a saddle: a piece of ragged cloth or matting, merely intended to
hide their distressing sores, was all that was on most of them. The
first I mounted sank to the ground under the weight of ten stone ten.
At last, the three most impetuous of our party selected the three
least emaciated, and started for Abydos. Later in the day our
telegram arrived, and the Governor immediately sent down to the
landing a dozen fairly-conditioned animals; but it was then too late in
the day for the rest of the party to undertake so long a ride.
It was the 3rd of January. The wheat was about two feet high, and
the beans were in flower. The word field would mislead. As we rode
on, mile after mile, there appeared to be no divisions of the land,
except the limits of the different kinds of grain growing upon it. We
crossed two or three large canals by earthen bars, which had been
thrown across them. The use of these bars is, as soon as the river
begins to sink, to retain the water with which the canals are then full.
We also passed several villages. At the first of these our dragoman
engaged the services of a stout young fellow, who came to
accompany us, provided with a heavy staff, about two inches or a
little more in diameter, and five feet in length. The villagers about
Abydos have a bad character, and are occasionally troublesome,
and this young fellow was to be our escort and guide. We did not
ride through any of the villages on our way, for the road was always
made to skirt the outside of the walls. At the gate of one we passed,
we saw a woman and a lad seated on the ground, playing at a game
resembling draughts. The board was marked out on the road, which
had also supplied the men, in the form of pieces of camel dirt. The
sight gave one a little shock. These poor women, however, spend no
small portion of their lives in converting the raw material of this
natural product into manufactured fuel, and the whole of their lives in
the odour of its smoke.
In the open, by the roadside, we saw some rectangular enclosures
of about six yards by four. In each of them a family was residing. I
supposed they were engaged in watching the crops. As these
enclosures consist of nothing but four thin screens, about seven feet
high, of wattled reeds, their inmates, if that is an appropriate term,
must sleep, wrapped in their burnouses, beneath the stars. The reed
fence can only be intended to keep out the wind, the jackals, and the
eyes of curious passers-by; but Arabs do not mind exposure at night
as long as their heads are wrapped up. I saw, at Assouan and
Miniéh, several sleeping in this way, in the open market-place, on
their goods. At Suez, being out at dawn, I saw in the Arab town the
men sleeping outside their huts on a morning when the mercury had
sunk to freezing point. With us Europeans, the first thought is to keep
the feet warm. About this extremity of his personal domain the Arab
is heedless. His care, like the nigger’s, is for his head—-just as the
Esquimaux dog, when sleeping, covers his nostrils with his bushy
tail, or the pig buries his snout in the straw, so does the Arab, when
he makes himself up for the night, envelope his whole head in some
thick wrapper. Is this a consequence of his practice of never having
his head uncovered during the day? I suppose they are none the
worse for breathing and rebreathing the same air all night, with the
exception of the little that may filter through the wrapper.
The rubbish mounds of Abydos are, by their height, and the extent
of ground they cover, infallible witnesses to the importance of the old
primæval city. From among these mounds two grand structures of
the days of Sethos and Rameses have been disinterred. One is a
palace, the joint work of father and son. That the genius of Egypt
was, as might have been expected at this culminating era of its glory,
advancing, and full of invention, is seen in the ceilings of the halls of
this palace: they are vaulted. These vaulted roofs, however, are not
arches of construction, but formed by placing the enormous slabs of
sandstone, of which the roof is made, not with their broad, but with
their narrow, faces on the plane of the ceiling. This gave a roof of
vast thickness, from which the vault of the roof was excavated. The
colouring of these roofs, as of all the decorations of these two grand
buildings at Abydos, is remarkably good and well preserved.
The other building, which was dedicated to Osiris, who was
supposed to have been buried here, was once his most sacred and
frequented temple. It was much enlarged and embellished by the
great Rameses. The inner walls of the sanctuary were encrusted
with alabaster, which still remains. I saw nowhere else Egyptian work
in purer taste, nor sculptures so well preserved, both in form and
colour. One might have supposed that some of them had been
chiselled and coloured last week. I observed a figure of the great
king so absolutely untouched by time, that the colour of every bead
in his necklace, or collar, is quite fresh.
It was here that was found the celebrated tablet of Abydos, which
Rameses put up in the temple of Osiris, inscribed with the names of
all the kings who had preceded him. This and its fellow tablet, placed
at Karnak by Tuthmosis III., about two hundred years before the time
of Rameses, are invaluable, as they show that the records preserved
by the priests in writing, of which we have transcripts in the dynasties
of the priest Manetho, and in the Turin papyrus, are in accord with
the monuments. The monumental evidence, it may be observed, is
of two kinds. Speaking generally, it is absolutely contemporary—the
record having been sculptured in the lifetime of the man, the memory
of whose actions, possessions, and thoughts it preserved. There are,
however, in these two tablets of Karnak and Abydos, most precious
exceptions to the contemporaneousness of the monumental history.
How strong and clear was the historical sentiment in the mind of
these old Egyptians! We not only find each generation endeavouring
to perpetuate a knowledge of its own day, but, in the fourteenth and
sixteenth centuries before the Christian era, we find Egyptian kings
endeavouring to transmit to posterity the names, and the order of
their predecessors. This tablet of Abydos is one of the glories of our
National Museum.
The cemeteries of Abydos were very extensive. Their extent grew
out of the wish, very generally felt among well-to-do and educated
Egyptians, to be laid themselves where Osiris, the judge of all, had
once been laid.
As I have intimated, the site of This may, perhaps, cast some faint
ray of light on the question of how, and where, the first ancestors of
the Egyptians had entered Egypt. It throws, however, a flood of light
on the question of the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. We have
seen that in Egypt, in consequence of the absence, or scantiness of
rain, there are no springs, and that another consequence of this want
of rain is that the nitre, which the soil collects from the air, is not
dissolved and washed away, but accumulates to such a degree as to
render the water of the wells, which has percolated from the river
through the soil, brackish, and unfit for drinking. Now the distance of
This, in a direct line from the river, is seven miles and a half; if, then,
we put these points together, we shall see in them another argument
for the extreme antiquity of Egyptian civilization, besides those
drawn from the use of writing, the mythology, and from the absence
of anything like a beginning in the history of the useful arts, and of
their social arrangements. The combined force of these arguments
amounts to a demonstration that civilization was not in its infancy six
thousand years ago, at the era of the Thinite dynasties.
Here is the form of this contributory to the demonstration. An
uncivilized people would undoubtedly have placed their town on the
banks of the river, close to the water. But a people among whom
labour is organized, and who will be willing because they are
civilized, to go to a great deal of trouble and expense for an
adequate object, instead of giving up much good land for a large city,
and on a site, too, where it would be troubled by inundations, would
prefer to build it at a distance from the river, where the land was not
suitable for cultivation, and where it would be safe from inundations.
But in order to do this they must cut a canal seven and a half miles
long at the least, and so bring the water of the river to the city. These
thoughts the Egyptians had, and this work they accomplished, in the
ages which preceded Menes. No savage, or semi-savage people
would have entertained this scheme of the canal, or would have
carried it out. The site of This is thus alone strong evidence of a very
advanced contemporary civilization, no one can tell how many
centuries before the time of Menes; but at least for a sufficient tract
of time to allow of the growth of a powerful state, capable at last in
his time of imposing a dynasty on Egypt. The first cities in Egypt
must have been on the banks of the river; or in places where the
háger was near the bank. The first comers did not cut canals seven
and a half miles long at least; and none but a people already
powerful could protect such a canal, upon which their existence
depended. The people, then, were already civilized and powerful
who placed their city on such a site as that of This.
 There were kings in Egypt, we may be sure, before Menes. The
Egyptians themselves spoke of his predecessors as ‘the deceased,’
that is, those human rulers whose names had been lost. It was in the
time of these prehistoric, we may even say premythical kings, that
this This Canal, and indeed, probably, that the great Bahr Jusuf
Canal itself, which is throughout Egypt a second Nile, were
constructed. There were, therefore, at that day, men who were as
great in hydraulic engineering as any who came after them, but who
yet lived at so remote a time, that no trace of them could be found
even in the far-reaching and tenacious traditions of Egypt. If the Bahr
Jusuf, which passed by This, was older than the city, so much the
better for our argument.
 CHAPTER XIV.
THE FAIOUM.

Opera basilica.—Bacon.

The history of the reclamation of the Arsinoite nome, or

department, now the Faioum, would, if it had been preserved, or
could be recovered, throw much precious light on the antiquity and
power of the civilization of the primæval monarchy. But the simple
fact that its details had been lost, even in the remote days of Theban
learning and magnificence, when Egypt was at the summit of its
greatness and glory, possesses of itself much historical value, for it
shows at how much earlier a day the great undertaking had been
carried out; and that, as we know, by such a system of hydraulic
works, the newly-won district, too, having been adorned with such
cities and buildings, as leave no doubt about the high character of its
(were it not for the remains of these works and structures) prehistoric
civilization.
The Faioum is, geographically, a basin formed by a depression in
the Libyan range, about sixty miles to the south of the Pyramids of
Gizeh. The basin is about the size of Oxfordshire, or Surrey, that is
to say, it contains about 750 square, miles. More than 100 of these
may be occupied by the Birket el Keiroon, a natural lake, which
forms its northern and western boundary. This large piece of water
resembles a rude crescent, with its convex side to the north and
north-west, and its concave side to the south and south-east. On the
former side the contiguous desert rises into a hilly ridge; this
boundary being in fact an offset of the African range. The other side
of the lake looks upon the dry and shelving descent of the basin,
which, from its southern summit down to the edge of the water, has a
fall of about 100 feet, being about fifteen miles across. There are
considerable discrepancies as to the precise amount of this fall;