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THE KING’S BUSINESS
a bale of linen on his back, with a mod ern-looking trunk, slung by the handle, on his arm; and a merchant displaying his wares and brushing the flies from his basket of sweetmeats. From the same neighborhood comes a miniature pleasure boat of the Nile, a good model of those plying its waters today. It is complete even to the tiny voyagers re clining in the saloon. Also battalions of soldiers, Egyptian and Soudanese, uni formed and armed, the former with weapons of steel, the latter with flint- tipped arrows and bows. (Illustrating how stone and metal march side by sids from the beginning.) They are in ranks, four abreast, and seem, by tjieir indi vidualities, to be lifelikenesses. Glass mosaics, bo exquisitely laid that their lines of jointure are invisible to the unaided eye, bear testimony to the use of the lens, and adamantine rocks, microsco pically traced, indicate the use of tools of a hardness unknown to the graver of to day. It is evident that Egypt was not the kindergarten of the race. Sayce remarks, “The monumental history of Egypt gives no countenance to the fashionable the ories of the day which derive civilized man by a slow process of evolution out of a brute-like ancestor.” The earlier morals, theology, science and literature, as well as arts, excel those of succeeding ages, and not only make possible, but more than probable, all that the Word of God by the mouth of Moses ■declares. Legislation, priestly order, ceremonial; all are harmonious with the spirit and conditions of the Mosaic, and not with those of a later period. Nor is there reason to doubt, in contradiction to the record, that, familiar with this civilization, there were among the Israel ites artisans well qualified to construct the tabernacle of the wilderness and its vessels of gold and silver, and jewels adorned with precious stones, of a form fitted to shadow even heavenly things, and that that sacred edifice was not the hideous Bedawin tent and clumsy furni ture depicted by one of our Eastern pro fessors in his charts. It is inexcusable, against such facts, to assume that the descendants of Jacob were universally ignorant of this civilization because they were .bondsmen, especially since their subjugation was of a comparatively re cent date, and their ancestors for ages the honored guests of the empire. That Jews dwelt where such jewelry was pro duced as that which was discovered at Dashur, the mere description of which makes the eye sparkle with wonder and
adorn the original seat of the race, and with the Bible look to the East for the first inhabitants of the Delta of the Nile. Orientalists are coming into harmony on this; the features of the early Egyp tians are Asiatic in cast; there is kin ship in language, similarity in literary characters, in the names of cities and the functions of1gods. Remains on the Isthmus of Suez indicate that it was the bridge over which the Asiatic immigrants passed to settle the land of the pyra mids; and late announcements declare an antiquity of Chaldean civilization which harmonizes with these conclusions. The monuments are again in harmony with Scripture in assuming a high state of civilization among primitive mankind. They know no age of barbarism, with its successive stages of development; no prehistoric man in the absolute sense. Sayce says, “The earliest culture and civilization of Egypt, to which the monu- mentis bear witness, was, in fact, already perfect. It comes before us fully grown. The organization of the country was com plete, the arts were known and practised, and life, at all events for the rich, was not only comfortable buit luxurious. Egyptian civilization so far as we know at present has no beginning, the farther back we go the more perfect and devel oped it is found to be. * * * Yet Up- per Egypt is a country where nothing perished save by the hand of man. And Petrie, also, says, “This early civiliza tion was completely master of the arts of combined labor, of masonry, of sculp ture, of metal-working, of turning, of car pentry, of pottery, of weaving, of dye ing, and other elements of a highly or ganized social life, and in some respects their work is the equal of any that has been done by mankind in later ages. ’ His examination of the great pyramids shows that five thousand years before the excavation of Mount Cenis tunnel, when first employed by modern engineers, the diamond drill was operated in Egypt. No quarryman in England would under take to produce a monolithic obelisk, like the smaller ones of Egypt, as a monu ment to Prince Albert, and a large force of workmen under skilled engineers, with modern mechanical helps, were seventy- five days in merely turning over an or dinary obelisk of the ancients. A tomb at Meir, near Assiut, affords, with a por trait image of its mummied proprietor, a number of wooden figures representing the trades and professions in the sixth dynasty, a thousand years before Abra ham Among them is a porter bearing
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