The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

on. Those who dwell on

the rich banks of a river flowing through desert lands are always liable to

be attacked by the wandering shepherd hordes who resort to the waterside

in summer, when the wilderness pasture is dried up. There is nothing

such tribes desire better than to conquer the corn-growing people of the

river lands, and to make them pay a tribute of grain when the crops are

taken in. The Egyptians, as soon as they had won their harvests from the

flood, were obliged to defend them against the robbers of the desert, and

out of such wars arose a military caste. These allied themselves with the

intellectual caste, who were also priests, for among the primitive nations

religion and science were invariably combined. In this manner the

bravest and wisest of the Egyptians rose above the vulgar crowd, and the

nation was divided into two great classes, the rulers and the ruled.

 

Then oppression continued the work which war and famine had begun.

The priests announced, and the armies executed, the divine decrees. The

people were reduced to servitude. The soldiers discovered the gold and

emerald mines of the adjoining hills, and filled their dark recesses with

chained slaves and savage overseers. They became invaders; they

explored distant lands with the spear. Communications with Syria and

the fragrant countries at the mouth of the Red Sea, first opened by means

of war, were continued by means of commerce. Foreign produce became

an element of Egyptian life. The privileged classes found it necessary to

be rich. Formerly the priests had merely salted the bodies of the dead;

now a fashionable corpse must be embalmed, at an expense of two

hundred and fifty pounds, with asphalt from the Dead Sea and spices

from the Somali groves; costly incense must be burnt on the altars of the

gods; aristocratic heads must recline on ivory stools; fine ladies must

glitter with gold ornaments and precious stones, and must be served by

waiting-maids and pages with woolly hair and velvety black skins. War

and agriculture were no longer sufficient to supply these patrician wants.

It was no longer sufficient that the people should feed on dates and the

course doura-bread, while the wheat which they raised was sold by their

masters for gewgaws and perfumes. Manufactures were established;

slaves laboured at a thousand looms; the linen goods of Egypt became

celebrated throughout the world. Laboratories were opened; remarkable

discoveries were made. The Egyptian priests distilled brandy and sweet

waters. They used the blow-pipe, and were far advanced in the chemical

processes of art. They fabricated glass mosaics, and counterfeited

precious stones and porcelain of exquisite transparency and delicately

blended hues. With the fruits of these inventions they adorned their daily

life, and attracted into Egypt the riches of other lands.

 

Thus, when Nature selects a people to endow them with glory and with

wealth, her first proceeding is to massacre their bodies, her second to

debauch their minds. She begins with famine, pestilence and war; next,

force and rapacity above, chains and slavery below. She uses evil as the

raw material of good; though her aim is always noble, her earliest means

are base and cruel. But as soon as a certain point is reached she washes

her black and bloody hands, and uses agents of a higher kind. Having

converted the animal instinct of self-defence into the ravenous lust of

wealth and power, that also she transforms into ambition of a pure and

lofty kind. At first knowledge is sought only for the things which it will

buy—the daily bread indispensable to life, and those trinkets of body and

mind which vanity demands. Yet those low desires do not always and

entirely possess the human soul. Wisdom is like the heiress of the novel

who is at first courted only for her wealth, but whom the fortune-hunter

learns afterwards to love for herself alone.

 

At first sight there seems little in the arts and sciences of Egypt which

cannot be traced to the enlightened selfishness of the priestly caste. For

in the earlier times it was necessary for the priests to labour unceasingly

to preserve the power which they had usurped. It was necessary to

overawe not only the people who worked in the fields, but their own

dangerous allies, the military class; to make religion not only mysterious

but magnificent; not only to predict the precise hour of the rising of the

waters, or the eclipses of the moon, but also to adopt and nurture the fine

arts, to dazzle the public with temples, monuments, and paintings. Above

all, it was necessary to prepare a system of government which should

keep the labouring classes in subjection and yet stimulate them to labour

indefatigably for the state; which should strip them of all the rewards of

industry and yet keep that industry alive. Expediency will therefore

account for much that the Egyptian intellect produced, but it certainly will

not account for all. The invention of hieroglyphics is alone sufficient to

prove that higher motives were at work than mere political calculation

and the appetite of gold. For writing was an invention which at no time

could have added in a palpable manner to the wealth or power of the

upper classes, and which yet could not have been finished to a system

without a vast expenditure of time and toil. It could not have been the

work of a single man, but of several men labouring in the same direction,

and in its early beginnings must have appeared as unpractical, as truly

scientific to them, as the study of solar chemistry and the observation of

the double stars to us. Besides, the intense and faithful labour which is

conspicuous in all the Egyptian works of art could only have been

inspired by that enthusiasm which belongs to noble minds.

 

We may fairly presume that Egypt once possessed its chivalry of the

intellect, its heroic age, and that the violent activity of thought generated

by the love of life and developed by the love of power was raised to its

full zenith by the passion for art and science, for the beautiful and the

true.

 

At first the Nile valley was divided into a number of independent states,

each possessing its own corporation of priests and soldiers, its own laws

and system of taxation, its own tutelary god and shrine, but each a

member of one body, united by the belief in one religion, and assembling

from time to time to worship the national gods in an appointed place.

There, according to general agreement ratified by solemn oaths, all feuds

were suspended, all weapons laid aside. There also, under the shelter of

the sanctuary, property was secure, and the surplus commodities of the

various districts could be conveniently interchanged. In such a place,

frequented by vast crowds of pilgrims and traders, a great city would

naturally arise, and such it seems probable was the origin of Thebes.

 

But Egypt, which possesses a simple undivided form, and which is

nourished by one great arterial stream, appears destined to be surmounted

by a single head, and we perceive in the dim dawn of history a revolution

taking place, and Menes, the Egyptian Charlemagne, founding an empire

upon the ruins of local governments, and inspiring the various tribes with

the sentiment of nationality. Thebes remained the sacred city, but a new

capital, Memphis, was built at the other end of the valley, not far from the

spot where Cairo now stands.

 

By degrees the Egyptian empire assumed a consolidated form. A regular

constitution was established and a ritual prescribed. The classes were

organised in a more effective manner, and were not at first too strictly

fixed. All were at liberty to intermarry, excepting only the swineherds,

who were regarded as unclean. The system of government became

masterly, and the servitude of the people became complete. Designs of

imperial magnitude were accomplished, some of them gigantic but

useless, mere exploits of naked human strength, others structures of true

grandeur and utility. The valley was adorned with splendid monuments

and temples; colossal statues were erected, which rose above the houses

like the towers and spires of our cathedral towns. An army of labourers

was employed against the Nile. The course of the mighty stream was

altered; its waters were snatched from its bosom and stored up in Lake

Moeris, an artificial basin hollowed out of an extensive swamp, and

thence were conducted by a system of canals into the neighbouring

desert, which they changed to smiling fields. For the Sahara can always

be revived. It is barren only because it receives no rain.

 

The Empire consisted of three estates—the Monarch, the Army, and the

Church. There were in theory no limits to the power of the king. His

authority was derived directly from the gods. He was called “the Sun”;

he was the head of the religion and the state; he was the supreme judge

and lawgiver; he commanded the army and led it to war. But in reality

his power was controlled and reduced to mere pageantry by a parliament

of priests. He was elected by the military class, but as soon as he was

crowned he was initiated into the mysteries and subjected to the severe

discipline of the holy order. No slave or hireling might approach his

person: the lords in waiting, with the state parasol and the ostrich-feather

fans, were princes of the blood; his other attendants were invariably

priests. The royal time was filled and measured by routine: laws were

laid down in the holy books for the order and nature of the king’s

occupations. At daybreak he examined and dispatched his

correspondence; he then put on his robes and attended divine service in

the temple. Extracts were read from those holy books which contained

the sayings and actions of distinguished men, and these were followed by

a sermon from the High Priest. He extolled the virtues of the reigning

sovereign, but criticised severely the lives of those who had preceded

him—a post-mortem examination to which the king knew that he would

be subjected in his turn.

 

He was forbidden to commit any kind of excess: he was restricted to a

plain diet of veal and goose, and to a measured quantity of wine. The

laws hung over him day and night; they governed his public and private

action: they followed him even to the recesses of his chamber, and

appointed a set time for the embraces of his queen. He could not punish a

single person except in accordance with the code; the judges took oath

before the king that they would disobey the king if he ordered them to do

anything contrary to law. The ministry were responsible for the actions

of their master, and they guarded their own safety. They made it

impossible for him to forfeit that reverence and affection which the

ignorant and the religious always entertain for their anointed king. He

was adored as a god when living, and when he died he was mourned by

the whole nation as if each man had lost a well-beloved child. During

seventy-two days the temples were closed; lamentations filled the air; and

the people fasted, abstaining from flesh and wine, cooked food,

ointments, baths, and the company of their wives.

The Army appears to have been severely disciplined. To run twenty

miles before breakfast was part of the ordinary drill. The amusements of

the soldiers were athletic sports and martial games. Yet they were not

merely fighting men. They were also farmers. Each warrior received

from the state twelve acres of choice land; these gave him a solid interest

in the prosperity of the fatherland and in the maintenance of civil peace.

 

The most powerful of the three estates was undoubtedly the Church. In

the priesthood were included not only the ministers of religion, but also

the