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EGYPT

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FIRST

CHAPTER I.

COLONISED FROM THE NORTH EAST.THE GREAT RITUAL."-THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.THE THREE NILES.-FIRST EMIGRANTS FROM SHINAR. -EGYPT FIRST PEOPLED FROM THE EAST. THE RACES OF MEN.-THE SHEMITES.-THE NEGROES AND THE HAMATHITES.-THE FOUR RACES OF MANKIND. -NATIONS TO THE NORTH AND WEST.-THE DESCENDANTS OF HAM.-MIZRAIM. THE CANAANITES. -ANCIENT LIMITS OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.

THE remains of ancient Egypt are the monuments of a religion and polity which prevailed at a period far earlier than any other of which similar memorials are now in existence. The ruins of Thebes illustrate an epoch which precedes by at least a thousand years that of the ruins of Athens. The manners, customs and modes of thought that prevailed in Egypt, and of which its temples and tombs have preserved the record, are therefore those of an age of the world which is removed from the classic era by so wide an interval, that the one cannot, of necessity, be of any material service for the illustration of the other. They must be applied, we repeat, to the events of far earlier periods, before their real illustrative value can be made apparent.

The ample materials furnished by these remains, afford certain traces or memorials of the great event recorded in Scripture to have occurred on the plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia (Gen. xi. 1-9), in which the whole human race participated, and which issued in

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EGYPT FIRST COLONISED FROM THE NORTH EAST.

the first colonisation of Egypt as well as of all other ancient kingdoms. These we now proceed to consider.

§ 1. FIRST COLONISATION OF EGYPT.

The monumental indications of the fact, that Egypt was first colonised from the north east, are very apparent.

The city of Heliopolis, stood near the apex of the Delta, and in the place where most probably the first spot of habitable ground would have been met with on the banks of the Nile, by travellers from the north east; for at first, the arid sands of the desert were bounded by the pestilential swamps formed by the branches of the Nile, along the entire eastern boundary of the Delta.* This city was accounted the most ancient in Egypt: it had been long deserted in the times of Diodorus and Strabo, which nearly coincide with the Christian era. The obelisks with which Rome was decorated by the Cæsars, were all brought from the ruins of Heliopolis. Singularly enough, the tutelary deity of Heliopolis was (as its name imports) Athom the setting sun. The great sin of the builders of Babel would appear to have consisted in the dedication of their vast edifice to the worship of Baal or the sun; and nothing is more probable

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* The first great work of benevolence ascribed to Osiris, was the draining of the marshes to the east of the Delta. Plutarch de Iside et Osiride. Diod. Sic. i. 19.

+ This is mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus. It also appears from the inscriptions on the obelisks themselves. See the translation of the Flaminian obelisk, by the bishop of Gibraltar. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lit. vol. i. (2nd series), p. 176, seq. 9.

I am disposed to think that Athom is red; the colour of the setting sun.

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THE GREAT RITUAL.”

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than that those, who at the confusion of tongues departed from the plains of Shinar westward should carry with them the worship of the setting sun, even as the Persians and other nations who went forth to the eastward became worshippers of the rising sun.

*

The hieroglyphic name of Heliopolis, or rather of the nome or province of which Heliopolis was the capital, was, corresponding most probably with is "On" which is its scripture name. This name (which was ascertained by the bishop of Gibraltar) occurs in a connexion which curiously illustrates the extreme antiquity of the place it designates. Rolls of papyrus, filled with pictures and explanations of them in hieroglyphics, are not unfrequently found in the tombs and mummy-pits of Egypt. The contents are always repetitions or abbreviations of the same formula. This has been called THE GREAT RITUAL, or, more properly, THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, for the first part of it contains the adventures of the body, and the second those of the soul, after death. This last commences with a scene representing the bark of Athom, the setting sun, in the twelfth hour of the day, in which the soul has just embarked for the purpose of being conveyed in it to the nether world. The first character of the hieroglyphic name of

* The first character is a symbol, not the letter II p, as it reads in some other groups. The second character is n, which alone would

be pronounced en, or, on.

79.

† See his paper just referred to.

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A copy of the second part of the book of the dead, was published by the French government, in the "Description de l'Egypte,” p. 72— The whole of it has also very recently appeared from a full transcription in the Museum at Turin. It is published at Berlin, under the superintendence of Dr. Lipsius.

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THE SOUL AFTER DEATH.

Heliopolis appears near the boat, denoting that the scene is laid there. After this descent, the soul met with many adventures in the regions of the dead. It had to contend with many enemies, and to appease many divinities, before it arrived at the great hall of truth or judgment, where all its actions while incarnate in the body were weighed in the balance, and its future destinies depended on the result of the ordeal. The presiding judge at this assize is sometimes Osiris and sometimes Athom, in the many repetitions of the judgment scene that occur on monuments of every description.

It will be found on attentively examining this part of the book of the dead, that the soul was supposed to accompany the sun in the whole of his progress through the lower hemisphere, from his setting to his rising.

Very curious notions of the diurnal revolution of the sun were entertained in these ancient times. It was imagined or feigned, that his path through the heavens was a huge river or abyss which he navigated in twenty-four barks, conducted by the twelve hours of the day and the twelve hours of the night. The Nile of Egypt was a branch or offset from this abyss, leaving it at Abydos, the furthest point to the south to which, at the time of this invention, its course had been explored, and joining it again at Heliopolis or its vicinity.* The celestial Nile, or course of the

*Herodotus appears to have heard of this tradition in Egypt; he informs us-" It is said that the Nile flows out of the ocean, and that the ocean is the cause of its periodical overflow.”—Eut. c. 21. He confutes this notion in c. 23, saying, “I know of no river that is (a part of) the ocean. I suppose that Homer, or some of the ancient poets, gave rise to this notion by calling the Nile 'réavos." It would

THE THREE NILES.

sun during the day, was called the Nile of Egypt was

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Nen-moou,

Phe-moou, the infernal Nile, or course of the sun during the night, was called Meh-moou, that is, "full of water," because it was larger than either of the others, as it received the waters of both.

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+

THE THREE NILES.

There is a passage in the book of the dead which immediately follows the commencing scene, written under the picture of the bark of the first hour of the night, which gives us the geography of the Meh-moou. It reads thus:

rather appear that the Nile was called Oceanus in Homer's time, because it was supposed that it arose out of the ocean and flowed into the ocean again. In another place of the same book, he relates that the priest of Neith, at Sais, told him, as an undeniable fact, "that the Nile rose out of the earth from a deep cavern between two mountains, called Kpupi and Mupi, situated in the Thebaid between the city of Synia (Syene) and the island of Elephantine," c. 28. Herodotus laughs at this account; for, having been himself in the Thebaid, he of course knew better.

in the book of the dead.

This is evidently the tradition recorded The city of Sais is in the Delta.

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