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

whole civil service and the liberal professions. Priests were the royal

chroniclers and keepers of the records, the engravers of inscriptions,

physicians of the sick and embalmers of the dead, lawyers and lawgivers,

sculptors and musicians. Most of the skilled labour of the country was

under their control. In their hands were the linen manufactories and the

quarries between the Cataracts. Even those posts in the Army which

required a knowledge of arithmetic and penmanship were supplied by

them: every general was attended by young priest scribes, with papyrus

rolls in their hands and reed pencils behind their ears. The clergy

preserved the monopoly of the arts which they had invented; the whole

intellectual life of Egypt was in them. It was they who, with the

nilometers, took the measure of the waters, and proclaimed good harvests

to the people or bade them prepare for hungry days. It was they who

studied the diseases of the country, compiled a pharmacopoeia, and

invented the signs which are used in our prescriptions at the present day.

It was they who judged the living and the dead, who enacted laws which

extended beyond the grave, who issued passports to paradise, or

condemned to eternal infamy the memories of men that were no more.

 

Their power was immense, but it was exercised with justice and

discretion: they issued admirable laws, and taught the people to obey

them by the example of their own humble, self-denying lives.

 

Under the tutelage of these pious and enlightened men, the Egyptians

became a prosperous and also a highly moral people. The monumental

paintings reveal their whole life, but we read in them no brutal or

licentious scenes. Their great rivals, the Assyrians, even at a later period,

were accustomed to impale and flay alive their prisoners of war. The

Egyptians granted honours to those who fought gallantly against them.

The penalty for the murder of a slave was death; this law exists without

parallel in the dark slavery annals both of ancient and of modern times.

The pardoning power in cases of capital offence was a cherished

prerogative of royalty with them as with us; and with them also as with

us, when a pregnant woman was condemned to death the execution was

postponed until after the birth of the guiltless child. It is a sure criterion

of

the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms

except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.

Women were treated with much regard. They were allowed to join their

husbands in the sacrifices to the gods; the bodies of man and wife were

united in the tomb. When a party was given the guests were received by

the host and hostess seated side by side in a large armchair. In the

paintings their mutual affection is portrayed. Their fond manners, their

gestures of endearment, the caresses which they lavish on their children,

form sweet and touching scenes of domestic life.

 

Crimes could not be compounded, as in so many other ancient lands, by

the payment of a fine. The man who witnessed a crime without

attempting to prevent it was punished as partaker. The civil laws were

administered in such a manner that the poor could have recourse to them

as well as the rich. The judges received large salaries that they might be

placed above the temptation of bribery, and might never disgrace the

image of Truth which they wore round their necks suspended on a golden

chain.

 

But most powerful of all, to preserve the morality of the people by giving

a tangible force to public opinion, and by impeaching those sins against

society which no legal code can touch, was that sublime police institution

the “Trial of the Dead.”

 

When the corpse had been brought back from the embalming house it was

encased in a sycamore coffin covered with flowers, placed in a sledge,

and drawn by oxen to the sacred lake. The hearse was followed by the

relations of the deceased, the men unshorn and casting dust upon their

heads, the women beating their breasts and singing mournful hymns.

On the banks of the lake sat forty-two judges in the shape of a crescent;

a great crowd was assembled; in the water floated a canoe, and within it

stood Charon the ferryman, awaiting the sentence of the chief judge.

On the other side of the lake lay a sandy plain, and beyond it a range of

long, low hills, in which might be discerned the black mouths of the

caverns of the dead.

 

It was in the power of any man to step forward and accuse the departed

before the body could be borne across. If the charge was held to be

proved, the body was denied burial in the consecrated ground, and the

crowd silently dispersed. If a verdict of not guilty was returned, the

accuser suffered the penalty of the crime alleged, and the ceremony took

its course. The relatives began to sing with praises the biography of the

deceased; they sang in what manner he had been brought up from a child

till he came to man’s estate, how pious he had been towards the gods,

how righteous he had been towards men. And if this was true, if the

man’s life had indeed been good, the crowd joined in chorus, clapping

their hands, and sang back in return that he would be received into the

glory of the just. Then the coffin was laid in the canoe, the silent

ferryman plied his oar, a priest read the service of the dead, and the body

was deposited in the cemetery caves. If he was a man of rank he was laid

in a chamber of his own, and the sacred artists painted on the walls an

illustrated catalogue of his possessions, the principal occupations of his

life, and scenes of the society in which he moved. For the priests taught

that, since life is short and death is long, man’s dwelling-house is but a

lodging, and his eternal habitation is the tomb. Thus the family vault of

the Egyptian was his picture gallery, and thus the manners and customs of

this singular people have, like their bodies, been preserved through long

ages by means of religious art.

 

There are also still existing on the walls of the temples, and in the grotto

tombs, grand historical paintings which illuminate the terse chronicles

engraved upon the granite. Among these may be remarked one subject in

particular which appears to have been a favourite with the artist and the

public, for it again and again recurs. The Egyptians, distinguished always

by their smooth faces and shaven heads, are pursuing an enemy with long

beards and flowing robes, who are surrounded by flocks and herds. The

Egyptians here show no mercy; they appear alive with fury and revenge.

Sometimes the victor is depicted with a scornful air, his foot placed upon

the neck of a prostrate foe; sometimes he is piercing the body through and

through with a spear. Certain sandals have also been discovered in which

the figure of the same enemy is painted on the inner sole, so that the foot

trod upon the portrait when the sandal was put on.

 

Those bearded men had inflicted on Egypt long years of dreadful disaster

and disgrace. They were the Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula, a

pastoral race who wandered eternally in a burning land, each tribe or clan

within an orbit of its own. When they met they fought, the women

uttering savage cries and cursing their husbands if they retreated from the

foe. Accustomed to struggle to the death for a handful of withered grass

or for a little muddy water at the bottom of a well, what a rich harvest

must Egypt have appeared to them! In order to obtain it they were able to

suspend all feuds, to take an oath of alliance, and to unite into a single

horde. They descended upon their prey and seized it at the first swoop.

There does not appear to have been even one great battle, and this can be

explained if, as is probable enough, the Egyptians before that invasion

had never seen a horse.

 

The Arab horse, or rather mare, lived in her master’s tent and supped

from the calabash of milk, and lay down to sleep with the other members

of the family. She was the playmate of the children; on her the cruel, the

savage Bedouin lavished the one tender feeling of his heart. He treasured

up in his mind her pedigree as carefully as his own; he composed songs in

honour of his beloved steed—his friend, his companion, his ally. He sang

to her of the gazelles which they had hunted down, and of the battles

which they had fought together—for the Arab horse was essentially a

beast of war. When the signal was given for the charge, when the rider,

loudly yelling, couched his spear, she snorted and panted and bounded in

the air. With tail raised and spreading to the wind, with neck beautifully

arched, mane flapping, red nostrils dilating, and eyes glaring, she rushed

like an arrow into the midst of the melee. Though covered with wounds,

she would never turn restive or try to escape, but if her master was

compelled to take to flight she would carry him till she dropped down

dead.

 

It is quite possible that when the mounted army appeared in the river

plain the inhabitants were paralysed with fright, and believed them to be

fabulous animals, winged men. Be that as it may, the conquest was

speedy and complete; the imperial Memphis was taken, Egypt was

enslaved, and the king and his family and court were compelled to seek a

new home across the sandy seas.

 

On the south side of the Nubian desert was the land of Ethiopia, the

modern Sudan, which had been conquered by the Egyptians, and which

they used as an emporium in their caravan trade with Central Africa and

the shores of the Red Sea. But it could be reached only by means of a

journey which is not without danger at the present day, and which must

have been inexpressibly arduous at a time when the camel had not been

introduced.

 

The Nile, it is true, flows through this desert, and joins Ethiopia to Egypt

with a silver chain. But from the time of its leaving the Sudan until it

reaches the black granite gate which marks the Egyptian frontier, it is

confined within a narrow, crooked, hollow way. Navigation is

impossible, for its bed is continually broken up by rocks and the stream is

walled in; it cannot overflow its banks. The reign of the Sahara is

uninterrupted, undisturbed. On all sides is the desert, the brown, shining

desert, the implacable waste. Above is a ball of fire ascending and

descending in a steel blue sky; below, a dry and scorching sea which the

wind ripples into gloomy waves. The air is a cloud which rains fire, for it

is dim with perpetual dust—each molecule a spark. The eye is pained

and dazzled; it can find no rest. The ear is startled; it can find no sound.

In the soft and yielding sand the footstep perishes unheard; nothing

murmurs, nothing rustles, nothing sings. This silence is terrible, for it

conveys the idea of death, and all know that in the desert death is not far

off. When the elements become active they assume peculiar and

portentous forms. If the wind blows hard a strange storm arises; the

atmosphere is pervaded by a dull and lurid glare; pillars of sand spring up

as if by magic, and whirl round and round in a ghastly and fantastic

dance. Then a mountain appearing on the horizon spreads upward in the

sky, and a darkness more dark