WILKINSON'S SECOND SERIES ON THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE
ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
THESE volumes are a continuation, embracing such matter as could not be conveniently included in the author's former series ; and containing the agriculture and religion of the ancient Egyptians ; the agriculture involving irrigation, mensuration, the rearing of stock, the manuring of the soil, the rotation of crops, the general economy of the farming establishments, and the superintendence exercised over them ; the religion containing a general view of the Egyptian theology, compared with the other systems of the ancient world, and a particular account of each deity greater as well as less. The text is fairly sprinkled with wood-cuts illustrating the most striking matters touched upon ; and an entire volume of plates is added, of which the most prominent feature, apart from hieroglyphics and other points purely archeological, is the air of su- pernatural or mysterious power bestowed upon some of the divi- nities, and the intellectual character with which their animal beads are endowed.
As a learned and laborious contribution to the knowledge of an- cient Egypt, with occasional glimpses into the spirit of that remote civilization and peculiar system of society which existed prior to all written history, and is only recorded on tombs and monuments, the volumes are beyond all praise. So far as popular attraction is concerned, they are perhaps inferior to those of the former series, having less variety of subjects, and those subjects having less general interest. The world at large will always be more attracted by manners, and the practices, however trivial, of daily life, than by abstract and somewhat dry disquisitions on arts and theology. The first feature in the agriculture of Egypt was irrigation ; and consequent upon it, the sciences of geometry, astronomy, and all those secondary branches of astronomy which refer to the seasons and the atmospheric influences. Without embankments to regu- late the inundation of the Nile, the country would have been little better than marsh and wilderness, like the delta of the Niger or the Ganges ; and without a well-considered plan for distributing the waters of the river equally over different levels, the country, so far from maintaining seven millions of people and leaving a large sur- plus of corn for exportation, could only have supported life in the most favoured spots. But the annual overflowing of a country, of course, swept away the slighter landmarks, and involved the neces- sity of accurate mensuration, not only to apportion the rights of the proprietors, but the taxation of the state ; and hence originated, at an age too remote for record, the science of geometry, whose princi- ples Eucern eventually collected in the work that bears his name. The importance of everything connected with the inundation, which involved the question of plenty or famine, induced astronomical and meteorological observations, not merely as a curious matter of foreseeing, but in order, by foresight, to guard as well as might he against an excessive or deficient rise in the waters ; and from the vestige of an ancient Nileometer, Sir GARDNER WILKINSON has fixed the measure of the Egyptian cubit (1 ft. 8 in.) Although an annual deposit of a rich surface soil would seem to have sufficiently recruited the land for the scourging it was subjected to, the experience of the Egyptians proved that it was not ; and they adopted the rotation of crops, which, on its revival in England some century ago, was con- sidered a most extraordinary discovery of modern wisdom. The Minute attention paid to the rearing of smaller animals, that with us are held to be fere nature, may be considered indicative either of a low state of material prosperity in the people, (as the nurture of silk-worms can only be carried on where wages are low,) or of a condition of luxury to which we have only partially at- tained, in the instance of rabbits, pigs, and poultry. The accu- racy with which the numbers of ducks, geese, and even eggs, were registered by the bailiff scribes, reminds one of the exact accounting in the great English houses during the feudal ages. The plan of thrashing, by oxen treading-out the ears on a prepared area, seems to argue a bad economy in agriculture, for it must have been attended with great waste ; but it obtained in antiquity all over the world, as it is still practised in the East. The flail, rude implement as it is, appears to have been a mighty stretch of invention in an agriculturist. In thrashing by the flail, however, there must still be waste ; and to the muscles of an Asiatic, in a hot climate, such severe labour might be impossible. The inven- tion of thrashing-machines, or indeed of agricultural machinery of any kind, is within the memory of living men.
Although antiquity is the basis of these volumes, their author, it should be observed, is not a mere antiquarian only occupying him- self with the remote ; on the contrary, he brings an experience of the present to illustrate the past. See, for example, how he dis- misses the "travellers tales" of ancient and modern dangers— THE OASES AND THE SISIOOM.
From what has been said, it is evident that the oases are not fertile spots in the midst of a sandy plain, but depressions in the lofty tahle-land of Africa, where, by the removal of the superincumbent limestone strata, the water has the power of rising to the surface; nor is the desert a dreary plain of sand, which has overwhelmed a once fertile country, whose only traces are the iso- lated gardens of the oases, where the traveller runs a risk of being over- whelmed by sand, as the army of Cambyses was reported to have been. The notion is of old date, from Herodotus to the modern traveller who confines his experience to the valley of the Nile ; and if Strabo were listened to, it would require some degree of courage to visit the site of Memphis. lest, as he observes, the imprudent stranger should expose himself to " the danger of being over- taken by a whirlwind on his way."
Strabo, like other tratylkrs, must have braved great dangers during his voyage ; the ancients were alarmed at the sand and wondrous monsters ; and we now often read of narrow escapes from the effects of a simoom; - but, how- ever disagreeable this really is, and though caravans run the risk of losing their way if incautious enough to continue their route in its dense fog of dust, and consequently to perish in this waterless region, the very unpleasant death it has been reported to cause, is an exaggeration ; and speaking from the expe- rience of many a violent simoom in the most sandy parts of the desert, I can only say that it is bad enough without being exaggerated, but that it is much more frightful in a book of travels than in the country itself.
A very remarkable point in the civilization of the Egyptians, is the permanence of its results. The operation both of the Greeks and Romans upon modern times has been so far indirect, that it has produced its effects by the remains of letters, arts, and institu- tions : life and the means of living are now very different to what they were before the subversion of the Roman Empire. Egypt, there is no doubt, acted indirectly and by influence upon ancient Europe; but the modern inhabitants of that country are maintained by the relics of their ancestors. The wrecks of their monuments attract the world to Egypt ; in many places the tombs of the refined dead furnish habitations to the ignorant living, (it was a principle to bury beyond the reach of the inundations); the remains of their useful public works and the traditional practice of their useful arts furnish the diminished population with their subsistence, after Per- sians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Turks, and Mamelukes, have in different ages overrun and permanently occupied the country. And if this argues a singularity in the Copts which renders them inapt for improvement, it equally proves the profound adaptation of the ancient arts to the peculiar circumstances of the country. Of the modern practice of one of these arts, which has excited much at- tention in all ages, and, with the assistance of steam, been imitated in London as a show, we will quote our author's account. We allude to the artificial hatching of eggs ; which, after various re- movals in the ovens during six days,
"are then held up, one by one, towards a strong light ; and if the eggs appear clear, and of an uniform colour, it is evident they have not succeeded but if they show an opaque substance within, or the appearance of different shades, the chickens are already formed ; and they are returned to the oven for four more days, their positions being changed as before. At the expiration of the four days they are removed to another oven ; over which, however, are no fires. Here they lie for five days in one heap, the apertures and the door being closed with tow to exclude the air; after which they are placed sepa- rately, about one or two inches apart, over the whole surface of the mats, which are sprinkled with a little bran. They are at this time continually turned, and shifted from one part of the mats to another, during six or seven days, all air being carefully excluded, and are constantly examined by one of the rearers, who applies each singly to his upper eyelid. Those which are cold. prove the chickens to be dead, but warmth greater than the human skin is the favourable sign of their success. " At length the chicken, breaking its egg, gradually comes forth ; and it is not a little curious to see some half exposed and half covered by the shell,. while they chirp in their confinement, which they evince the greatest eagerness to quit. " The total number of days is generally twenty-one ; but some eggs with a thin shell remain only eighteen. The average of those that succeed is two- thirds ; which are returned by the rearers to proprietors, who restore to the peasants one-half of the chickens, the other being kept as payment for their - expenses."
The minute and superstitious ceremonies of the Egyptians was a fertile topic of ridicule for ancient satirists ; though they some- times fell into the common error of laughing at the absurdities of other people's creeds whilst they overlooked those of their own country. Sir GARDNER WILKINSON considers that the deities and worship of the Egyptians was not, like the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, an actual and substantial religion, but an outward type of an inward meaning, which the vulgar turned into a reality, mistaking the sign for the thing signified. Even this, however, bad as it was, was still further degraded by foreigners, who did not understand and therefore corrupted the doctrines they received.
CLASSICAL CORRUPTION OF THE RELIGION OF EGYPT.
From whatever source the Egyptians originally borrowed their ideas on these subjects, [the Unity, the Atonement, and the 'trinity,] it is evident that they refined upon them, and rendered their metaphysical speculations so complicated, that it required great care and attention on the part of the initiated to avoid confusion, and to obtain a perfect understanding of their purport. Hence it happened that those who had only obtained a limited insight into this intricate subject speedily perverted the meaning of the very groundwork itself; and the Greeks and Romans, who were admitted to participate in a portion of those secrets, fell into a labyrinth of error, which gave to the whole system the cha- racter of an absurd fable. Indeed they went still further, and taking literally certain enigmatical ceremonies, they converted speculative and abstract notions into physical realities, and debased the rites they borrowed from Egypt by the most revolting and profane excesses, tending to make religion ridiculous, and to obviate all the purposes for which it had been instituted; tor, however erro- neous the notions of the ancients were, however mistaken in the nature of the
Deity, and however much truth was obscured by the worship of a plurality of gods, still the morality inculcated by religion and practised by good men was deserving of commendation; and we cannot but censure those who degraded what was good, and added to error by the misapplication of mysterious secrets.
This perversion of certain allegorical rites, and the misinterpretations given by the Greeks and Romans to some religious customs of the Egyptians, have in many instances led to the idea that the priesthood of Thebes and Memphis, under the plea of religion, were guilty of enormities which would shock the most depraved ; and an erroneous judgment has been formed from the mode in which the worship of Osiris was conducted by his votaries at Rome. I will not pretend to say that the Romans did not find the ceremonies of that wor- ship already degraded in the Grzeco-Egyptian city of Alexandria : this is highly probable: but the reason of its perversion there resulted from the same cause as at Rome—the misapplication by foreign votaries of tenets they failed to comprehend; for it may be doubted if such rites were at any time known to the Egyptians ; and if any external ceremonies carried with them an appear- ance of indelicacy, they were merely emblematic representations, as in the case of the phallic figures, indicating the generative principle of nature. Here, as usual with the Egyptians, it was the abstract idea which alone occurred to the miud of those who understood the religion they professed ; but the Greeks and Romans, owing to the grossness of their imaginations, saw nothing beyond the external form that presented itself to te eye, and instead of the power or ab- stract cause, they merely thought of its physical character. Hence the absurd worship of the mere agent in lieu of a first cause; and hence, in consequence, all those revolting scenes by which religion was degraded and the human mind corrupted; the more deplorable, since mankind is ever prone to commit the greatest excesses when their acts are believed to have the sanction of religion.
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