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

on religious

philosophy, medicine, music, and geometry, and the historical archives,

which were probably little else than a register of the names of kings, with

the dates of certain inventions and a scanty outline of events.

 

Even these books, so few in number, were not open to all the members of

the learned class. They were the manuals of the various departments or

professions, and each profession stood apart; each profession was even

sub-divided within itself. In medicine and surgery there were no general

practitioners. There were oculists, aurists, dentists, doctors of the head,

doctors of the stomach, etc., and each was forbidden to invade the

territory of his colleagues. This specialist arrangement has been highly

praised, but it has nothing in common with that which has arisen in

modern times.

 

It is one of the first axioms of medical science that no one is competent to

treat the disease of a single organ unless he is competent to treat the

diseases of the whole frame. The folly of dividing the diseases of such

organs as the head and stomach, between which the most intimate

sympathy exists, is evident even to the unlearned. But the whole

structure is united by delicate white threads, and by innumerable pipes of

blood. It is scarcely possible for any complaint to influence one part

alone. The Egyptian, however, was marked off like a chess board into

little squares, and whenever the pain made a move a fresh doctor had to

be called in.

 

This arrangement was part of a system founded on an excellent principle,

but carried to absurd excess. It is needless to explain that division of

labour is highly potent in developing skill and economising time. It is

also clearly of advantage that in an early stage of society the son should

follow the occupation of the father. It is possible that hereditary skill or

tastes come into play; it is certain that apprenticeship at home is more

natural and more efficient than apprenticeship abroad. The father will

take more pains to teach, the boy will take more pains to learn, than will

be the case when master and pupil are strangers to each other.

 

The founders of Egyptian civilisation were acquainted with these facts.

Hence they established customs which their successors petrified into

unchanging laws. They did it no doubt with the best of motives. They

adored the grand and noble wisdom of their fathers; whatever came from

them must be cherished and preserved. They must not presume to depart

from the guidance of those god-like men. They must paint as they

painted, physic as they physicked, pray as they prayed. The separation of

classes which they had made must be rendered rigid and eternal.

 

And so the arts and sciences were ordered to stand still, and society was

divided and sub-divided into functions and professions, trades and crafts.

Every man was doomed to follow the occupation of his father, to marry

within his own class, to die as he was born. Hope was torn out of the

human life. Egypt was no longer a nation, but an assemblage of torpid

castes isolated from one another and breeding in and in. It was no longer

a body animated by the same heart, fed by the same blood, but an

automaton neatly pieced together, of which the head was the priesthood,

the arms were the army, and the feet the working-class. In quiescence it

was a perfect image of the living form, but a touch came from without,

and the arms broke asunder at the joints and fell upon the ground.

 

The colony founded in the Sudan by the exiled Pharaohs became after the

restoration an important province. When the new empire began to

decline a governor-general rebelled, and the kingdom of Ethiopia was

established. It was a medley dominion composed of brown men and

black men, shepherds and savages, half-caste Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers,

and negroes, ruled over by a king and a college of priests. It was

enriched by annual slave hunts into the Black Country, and by the

caravan trade in ivory, gold dust, and gum. It also received East India

goods and Arabian produce through its ports on the Red Sea. Meroe, its

capital, attained the reputation of a great city; it possessed its temples and

its pyramids like those of Egypt, but on a smaller scale. The Ethiopian

empire in its best days might have comprised the modern Egyptian

provinces of Kordofan and Sennaar, with the mountain kingdom of

Abyssinia as it existed under Theodore. Of all the classical countries it

was the most romantic and the most remote. It was situated, according to

the Greeks, on the extreme limits of the world; its inhabitants were the

most just of men, and Jupiter dined with them twice a year. They bathed

in the waters of a violet-scented spring which endowed them with long

life, noble bodies, and glossy skins. They chained their prisoners with

golden fetters; they had bows which none but themselves could bend. It

is at least certain that Ethiopia took its place among the powers of the

ancient world. It is mentioned in the Jewish records and in the Assyrian

cuniform inscriptions.

 

So far had Egypt fallen that now it was conquered by its ancient province.

Sabaco of Ethiopia seized the throne and sat upon it many years. But he

was frightened by a dream; he believed that a misfortune impended over

him in Egypt. He abdicated in haste and fled back to his native land.

 

His departure was followed by uproar and confusion, a complete

disruption of Egyptian society, usurpation, and civil war.

 

But why should this have been? Sabaco was an Egyptian by descent,

though his blood had been darkened on the female side. He had governed

in the Egyptian manner. He had abolished capital punishment, but in no

other way had altered the ancient laws. He had improved the public

works. He had taken the country rather as a native usurper than as a

foreign foe. His reign was merely a change of dynasty, and Egyptian

history is numbered by dynasties as English history is numbered by kings.

 

But indirectly the Ethiopian conquest had prepared a revolution.

Between the two services, the Army and the Church, there had existed a

constant and perhaps wholesome rivalry since the days of Menes, the first

king. It was a victory of the warrior class which established the regal

power. It was a victory of the priests which assigned to themselves the

right hand, to the officers the left hand, of the sovereign when seated on

his throne. It was an evident compromise between the two that the king

should be elected from the army, and that he should be ordained as soon

as he was crowned. During the brilliant campaigns of the Restoration the

military had been in power, but a long period of inaction had intervened

since then. The discipline of the soldiers was relaxed; their dignity was

lowered; they no longer tilled their own land—that was done by foreign

slaves. Their rivals possessed the affection and reverence of the common

people, while these soldiers, who had never seen a battle, were detested

as idle drones who lived upon what they had not earned. Under the new

dynasty their position became insecure. In Ethiopia there was no military

casts. The army of Sabaco had been levied from the pastoral tribes on the

outskirts of the desert, from the Abyssinian mountaineers and the negroes

of the river plain. The king of Ethiopia was a priest, elected by his peers.

He therefore regarded the soldier aristocracy with no friendly eye. He did

not formally invade their prescriptive rights, but he must have disarmed

them or in some way have taken out their sting. For as soon as he was

gone the priests were able to form an alliance with the people, and to

place one of their own caste upon the throne. This king deprived the

soldiers of their lands, and the triumph of the hierarchy was complete.

 

But in such a country as Egypt Disestablishment is a dangerous thing.

During long centuries the people had been taught to associate innovation

with impiety. That venerable structure the Egyptian constitution had

been raised by no human hands. As the gods had appointed certain

animals to swim in the water, and others to fly in the air, and others to

move upon the earth, so they had decreed that one man should be a priest,

and that another should be a soldier, and that another should till the

ground. There are times when every man feels discontented with his lot.

But it is evident that if men were able to change their occupation

whenever they chose, there would be a continual passing to and fro.

Nobody would have patience to learn a trade; nobody would settle down

in life. In a short time the land would become a desert, and society would

be dissolved. To provide against this the gods had ordained that each

man should do his duty in that state of life into which he had been called,

and woe be to him that disobeys the gods! Their laws are eternal and can

never change. Their vengeance is speedy and can never fail.

 

Such, no doubt, was the teaching of the Egyptian Church, and now the

Church had shown it to be false. The revolution had been begun, and, as

usually happens, it could not be made to stop half way. As soon as the

first precedent was unloosed, down came the whole fabric with a crash.

The priest-king Sethos reigned in peace, but as soon as he died the central

government succumbed; the old local interests which had been lying

dormant for ages raised their heads; the empire broke up into twelve

states, each governed by a petty king.

 

We now approach the event which first brought Egypt into contact with

the European world. Psammiticus, one of the twelve princes, received as

his allotment the swampy district which adjoined the seacoast and the

mouths of the Nile. His fortune, as we shall see, was made by this

position.

 

The commerce of Egypt had hitherto been conducted entirely by means

of caravans. From Arabia Felix came a long train of camels laden with

the gums of that aromatic land, and with the more precious produce of

countries far beyond—with the pearls of the Persian Gulf and the carpets

of Babylon, the pepper and ginger of Malagar, the shawls of Kashmir, the

cinnamon of Ceylon, the fine muslins of Bengal, the calicoes of

Coromandel, the nutmegs and camphor and cloves of the Indian

Archipelago, and even silk and musk from the distant Chinese shores.

From Syria came other caravans with the balm of Gilead, so precious in

medicine, asphalt from the Dead Sea for embalming, cedar from

Lebanon, and enormous quantities of wine and olive oil in earthern jars.

Meroe contributed the spices of the Somali country, ebony, ivory, ostrich

feathers, slaves, and gold in twisted rings; the four latter products were

also imported direct from Darfour, and by another route which connected

Egypt through Fezzan with Carthage, Morocco, and the regions beyond

the desert in the neighbourhood of Timbuktu. In return, the beautiful

glass wares of the Egyptians and other artistic manufactures were

exported to Hindustan; the linen goods of Memphis were carried into the

very heart of Africa as Manchester goods are now; and then, as now, a

girdle of beads was the essential part of an African young lady’s dress.

 

On the side of the Mediterranean Egypt was a closed land, and this

Chinese policy had not been adopted from superstitious motives. The

first ships which sailed that sea were pirates who had kidnapped and

plundered the dwellers on the coast. The government had therefore in

self-defence placed a garrison at Rhacotis harbour, with orders to kill or

enslave