Egyptian Myths And Legend. Donald Mackenzie
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"knowledge" or understand "the language of birds". In an Egyptian folk tale Ahura, after killing the "Deathless Snake", similarly understands "the language of birds, fishes", &c. Harpocrates appears to be the god Horus as the dragon−slaying Sutekh, the imported legend being preserved in the Ahura tale of the Empire period, when Egypt received so many Asiatic immigrants that the facial type changed as the statuary shows. Professor Elliot Smith considers that while the early Egyptian was "the representative of his kinsman the Neolithic European . . . the immigrant population into both Europe and Egypt" represented "two streams of the same Asiatic folk". Racial myths appear to have followed in the tracks of the racial drift.
In our historical narrative the reader is kept in touch with the great civilizations of the Cretans, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, &c., which influenced and were influenced. by Egypt. Special attention is also devoted to Palestine and the great figures in Biblical narrative – Joseph, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Nahum, and the notable kings of Israel and Judah. There are numerous quotations from the Old Testament, and especially from the prophets who dealt with the political as well as the religious problems of their times. To students of the Bible this part of the volume should make special appeal. It is impossible to appreciate to the full the power and sagacity of Isaiah's sublime utterances without some knowledge of the history of ancient Egypt.
Introduction
"CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE", on the Thames Embankment, affords us an introduction to ancient Egypt, "the land of marvels" and of strange and numerous deities. This obelisk was shaped from a single block of red granite quarried at Assouan by order of one of the old Pharaohs; it is 68 feet 5½, inches high, and weighs 186 tons. Like one of our own megalithic monuments, it is an interesting relic of stone worship. Primitive man believed that stones were inhabited by spirits which had to be propitiated with sacrifices and offerings, and, long after higher conceptions obtained, their crude beliefs survived among their descendants. This particular monument was erected as a habitation for one of the spirits of the sun god; in ancient Egypt the gods were believed to have had many spirits.
The "Needle" was presented to the British Government in 1820, and in 1877−8 was transported hither by Sir Erasmus Wilson at a cost of £10,000. For about eighteen centuries it had been a familiar object at Alexandria. Its connection with the famous Queen Cleopatra is uncertain; she may have ordered it to be removed from its original site on account of its archæological interest, for it was already old in her day. It was first erected at Heliopolis thirty−two centuries ago. But even then Egypt was a land of ancient memories; the great Pyramids, near Cairo, were aged about 500 years, and the Calendar had been in existence for over fourteen centuries.
Heliopolis, "the city of the sun", is called On in the Bible. It was there that Moses was educated, and became "mighty in word and in deed". Joseph had previously married, at On, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, a priest of the sun temple, the site of which, at modern Matarieh, is marked by an erect obelisk of greater antiquity even than the "Needle". Near by are a holy well and a holy tree, long invested with great sanctity by local tradition. Coptic Christians and native Mohammedans still relate that when Joseph and Mary fled with the infant Christ into Egypt, to escape the fierce King Herod, they rested under the tree, and that Mary washed in the well the swaddling clothes of the holy child.
When "Cleopatra's Needle" was erected at On, which is also called Beth−shemesh , "the house of the sun god", in the Hebrew Scriptures, the priests taught classes of students in the temple colleges. For about thirty centuries the city was the Oxford of Egypt. Eudoxus and Plato, in the course of their travels, visited the priestly professors and heard them lecture. As ancient tradition has credited Egypt with the origin of geometry, Euclid, the distinguished mathematician, who belonged to the brilliant Alexandria school, no doubt also paid a pilgrimage to the ancient seat of learning. When he was a student he must have been familiar with our "Needle"; perhaps he puzzled over it as much as some of us have puzzled over his problems.
At On the Egyptian students were instructed, among other things, to read and fashion those strange pictorial signs which appear on the four sides of the "Needle". These are called hieroglyphics, a term derived from the Greek words hieros, "sacred", and glypho, "I engrave", and first applied by the Greeks because they believed that picture writing was used only by Egyptian priests for religious purposes. Much of what we know regarding the myths, legends, and history of the land of the Pharaohs has been accumulated since modern linguists acquired the art of reading those pictorial inscriptions. The ancient system had passed out of human use and knowledge for many long centuries when the fortunate discovery was made of a slab of black basalt on which had been inscribed a decree in Greek and Egyptian. It is called the "Rosetta Stone", because it was dug up at Rosetta by a French officer of engineers In 1799, when Napoleon, who had invaded Egypt, ordered a fort to be rebuilt. It was afterwards seized by the British, along with other antiquities collected by the French, and was presented by George III to the British Museum in 1802.
Copies of the Rosetta Stone inscriptions were distributed by Napoleon, and subsequently by British scholars, to various centres of learning throughout Europe. It was found that the Greek section recorded a decree, issued by the native priests to celebrate the first anniversary of Pharaoh Ptolemy V in 195 B.C. The mysterious Egyptian section was rendered in hieroglyphics and also in Demotic, a late form of the cursivesystem of writing called Hieratic. In 1814 two distinguished linguists, Dr. Thomas Young in Britain, and Professor Champollion in France, engaged in studying the quaint pictorial signs. The credit of having first discovered the method of reading them is claimed for both these scholars, and a heated controversy waged for long years over the matter. Modern opinion inclines to the view that Young and Champollion solved the secret simultaneously and independently of each other. The translation of other Egyptian texts followed in course; and of late years so great has been the skill attained by scholars that they are able to detect blunders made by ancient scribes. Much uncertainty exists, however, and must ever exist) regarding the proper pronunciation of the language.
Another source of knowledge regarding the civilization of Egypt is the history of Manetho, a native priest, who lived at the beginning of the third century before Christ. His books perished when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, but epitomes survive in the writings of Julius Africanus, Eusebius, and George the Syncellus, while fragments are quoted by Josephus. Manetho divided the history of his country into thirty dynasties, and his system constitutes the framework upon which our knowledge of the great Egyptian past has accumulated.
Divergent views exist regarding the value of Manetho's history, and these are invariably expressed with point and vigour. Professor Breasted, the distinguished American Egyptologist, for instance, characterizes the chronology of the priestly historian as "a late, careless, and uncritical compilation", and he holds that it "can be proven wrong from the contemporary monuments in the vast majority of cases". "Manetho's dynastic totals", he says, "are so absurdly high throughout that they are not worthy of a moment's credence, being often nearly or quite double the maximum drawn from contemporary monuments. Their accuracy is now maintained only by a small and constantly decreasing number of modern scholars." Breasted goes even further than that by adding: "The compilation of puerile folk tales by Manetho is hardly worthy of the name history".
Professor Flinders Petrie, whose work as an excavator has been epochmaking, is inclined, on the other band, to attach much weight to the history of the native priest. "Unfortunately," he says, "much confusion has been caused by scholars not being content to accept Manetho as being substantially correct in the main, though with many small corruptions and errors. Nearly every historian has made large and arbitrary assumptions and changes, with a view to reducing the length of time stated. But recent discoveries seem to prove that we must accept the lists of kings as having been, correct, however they may have suffered in detail. . . . Every accurate test that we can apply shows the general trustworthiness of Manetho apart from minor corruptions."
Breasted, supported by other leading Egyptologists, accepts what is known as the "Berlin system of Egyptian chronology". The following tables illustrate how greatly he differs from Petrie:
Breasted. Petrie.
Mena's Conquest 3400 B.C. 5550 B.C.
Twelfth Dynasty 2000 B.C. 3400 B.C.
Eighteenth Dynasty