CHAPTER VIII

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THE SWORD IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND IN MODERN AFRICA.

The present state of our history shows us nothing anterior to Egypt in the civilisation of Language, of Literature, of Science, Art and Arms. We must now modify and modernise the antiquated and obsolete saying—‘ex Oriente lux’—the fancy that illumination came from India, when the reverse is true. The light of knowledge dawned and dayed not in the East, but in the South, in the Dark Continent, which is also the High Continent.[450] Nor can we any longer admit that

Westward the course of empire takes its way.

As Professor Lepsius teaches us, ‘In the oldest times within the memory of man, we know of only _one_ advanced culture; of only _one_ mode of writing, and of only one literary development, viz. those of Egypt.’ Karl Vogt, a man who has the courage to say what he thinks, bluntly states: ‘Our civilisation came not from Asia, but from Africa.’ For our origin we must return to

The world’s great mistress in the Egyptian vale.

The modern Egyptologist is reforming the false and one-sided theories based upon the meagre studies of anthropological literature in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Yet in the Nile Valley we are only upon the threshold of exploration—topographical, linguistic, and scientific. Of its proto-Egyptians and its primæval workmanship as yet we know little; and it is truly preposterous to suppose that man began his artistic life by building pyramids, cutting obelisks, and engraving hieroglyphs. The ‘Cushite School,’ based upon the Asiatic Ethiopians of Eusebius the Bishop,[451] and unfortunately represented by Bunsen, Maspero, Wilkinson, Mariette, Brugsch, and a host of minor names, has determined that the old Nilotes ‘undoubtedly came from Asia.’ The theory utterly lacks proof; and the same may be said of the popular assertion, based upon Biblical grounds—‘The early colonists of Egypt came thither from Mesopotamia.’ We seem to be reading fable when told (by William Osburn[452]), ‘The skill of these primitive artists of Egypt was a portion of that civilisation which its first settlers brought with them when they located themselves in the Valley of the Nile.’

My conviction is that the ancient Egyptians were Africans, and pure Africans; that the Nile-dwellers are still negroids whitened by a large infusion of Syrian, Arabian, and other Asiatic blood; and that Ethiopia is its old racial home. Æschylus had already robed their black limbs in white raiment when Herodotus (ii. 104) made them dark-skinned compared with the Arabs[453] and North Africans. Every traveller finds his description hold good to the present day. Blumenbach declared the old Egyptians to be of Berber origin, the race of Psametik, or the Son of the Sun. Hartmann opined that they were not Asiatics but Africans, and Dr. Morton modified his first opinion, finding the cranium to be negroid. I hope to prove their correctness by making a large collection of mummy skulls.[454] It is certain that the modern Egyptian’s hair—that great characteristic of race, according to Pruner Bey—is not silky, as Professor Huxley says, but wiry like that of his forefathers.[455] Moreover, his type, as distinctly shown by the Sphinx, is melanochroic-negroid. Lastly, there are other signs, which need not here be noticed, distinguishing the African—horse as well as human—from the Arabian.

[Heading: _ANTIQUITY OF EGYPT._]

There is a history of ancient Egypt, into which we have not yet penetrated. Herodotus (ii. 142) glances at it when he makes the Ptah-priest at Memphis pretend to an antiquity of 11,340 years,[456] during which reigned 341 generations of kings and pontiffs.[457] Plato does the same when he speaks of hymns 10,000 years old, and Mela[458] when he numbers 330 kings before Amasis, who ruled more than 30,000 years. Mena (Menes), the first man-monarch who founded Memphis (B.C. 4560?) some centuries before the Hebrew Creation, was preceded for 13,000 years by the ‘Dynasty of the Gods’ (god-kings), suggesting a governmental hierarchy of the fetisheer caste: and this lasted for ages, till the Soldier upset the Priest and raised himself to the rank of Pharaoh[459] and king. Traces of the proto-Egyptian dynasties in which the men of the Pen controlled the men of the Sword long survived; and in later times the ecclesiastical order again ruled the military. We know nothing of the hierarchical supremacy but its baldest outline. When our modest chronologists allow 6000 years to its incept, they run into the contrary extreme of those who assign to it myriads of centuries. Rodier[460] is more reasonable; he opines that the cycle of 1,460 years dates in Egypt from B.C. 14,611.

[Illustration: FIG. 151.—1. BRONZE DAGGER; 2. SWORD (14 inches long).]

Again, it will probably be found that ancient Egypt was _not_ ‘the narrowest strip of land in the world running between a double desert.’ The extent of ‘Kemi’[461] has been arbitrarily confined to the Riverine Valley as far as the First Cataract, or seven hundred by seven miles widening out in the Delta-netherland to a base of eighty-one miles. We may fairly suspect that modern Masr is only a slice from the eastern half of the antique Mizraim. The Greeks made the frontier of Asia extend beyond the Suez isthmus and the Nile to the lands of Libya.[462] This Greater Egypt is still suggested by the system of Bahr bilá má, large _Fiumare_ now bone-dry, and by the alignment of the oases in the wilderness west of the River Valley with their giant ruins of a proto-historic Past. These may date from the days when the basin of the Bahr el-Ghazal—a lake like the Tanganyika and the Victoria Nyanza—discharged its annual flood to the North in channels parallel with the ‘River Ægyptus.’[463] The lacustrine bed would silt up by the natural process of warping, and the surplus water, no longer able to discharge northwards, would force itself eastwards to the Nile. The easier drainage would presently convert the lake into a river-basin and system, and the lands no longer irrigated would become a waste dotted like a leopard skin with oases or watered valleys.

An abundance of popular literature has familiarised the public with the outer aspect of ancient Egypt, but the world is still far from recognising the message she sent to mankind. We must go back to ‘the Wonderland on the banks of the mighty Nile’ for the origin of all things which most interest us. It is the very cradle-land of language. Her tongue contains all the elements of the so-called ‘Aryan,’[464] Semitic, and Allophyllian or Turanian families, and dates long before the days of the present distribution. Bunsen’s ‘Egypt’ first noticed this fact at some length, without, however, dwelling upon its importance. ‘All Semitic pronouns and suffixes,’ says M. C. Bertin, ‘can be traced back to Egyptian, especially the Egyptian of the earliest dynasties’; he might have added much about other mechanical forms. Brugsch tells us (i. 3) that the primitive roots and the essential elements of the Egyptian grammar point to an intimate connection of the Indo-Germanic (!) and Semitic languages.[465] The Allophyllian or Agglutinative Turanian,[466] a _tertium quid_ which is neither ‘Aryan’ nor ‘Semitic,’ is also traceable in old Coptic.

[Heading: _ORIGINS IN EGYPT._]

What, then, do these facts suggest? Simply that the elements existing in Egyptian travelled from the banks of the Nile and evolved, discreted, and differentiated themselves in many centres. The word-compounding or Iranian scheme found homes in Eastern Europe (Greece, Italy, and the Slavonic or quasi-Asiatic half); in Asia Minor—especially Phrygia—in Mesopotamia, in Persia, and finally in India, where the settlement was comparatively modern. This explains how a philologist would derive Sanskrit from Lithuania. This saves us from the ‘Aryan heresy’;[467] this abolishes ‘Indo-European,’ and worse still ‘Indo-Germanic’—that model specimen of national modesty. Both are terms which contain a theory and an unproved theory. Again, the word-developing or Arabian scheme, absurdly termed Semitic (from Shem!), increased, multiplied, and perfected itself in Northern Africa and Arabia, while the Turanian, becoming independent and specialised in Akkadian, overspread Tartary and China.

And this one primæval language of Egypt framed for itself an alphabet whence are derived all others. This is proved by the fact that each and all begin, as Plutarch tells us old Coptic did, with the letter A. Of its age in Nile-land we may judge from the cartouche containing Khufu’s name, left by some workman on an inner block of the Great Pyramid.[468] How many generations of articulate-speaking men must have come and gone before so artificial and artistic a system as the Royal Signature upon the Shield occurred to the human mind!

But Egypt did still more. She was the fountain-head of knowledge which overflowed the world. Eastward the great current set through Babylonia and Chaldæa, Persia and India, Indo-China, China, and Japan, to Australia and Polynesia. Westward it flooded Africa and Europe. It may have reached America by two ways. The Oriental line would extend from China and Japan to the Eastern Pacific coast: the Occidental was practicable _viâ_ Atlantis, or possibly in the days when Behring’s Straits did not exist. It found a new Mediterranean in the great Caribbean Gulf, and new Indies in Mexico and Peru. Indeed, the march of intellect from Egypt is conterminous with the limits of the habitable globe.

The invention of an alphabet would necessarily lead to literature—poetry, history, and criticism. The earliest known manuscript is the Prisse (d’Avennes) Papyrus, a roll dating from the days of Pharaoh Tat-ka-ra, last of the Fifth Dynasty (circ. B.C. 3000). It is a collection of proverbs, maxims, precepts, and commandments, of which the fifth is, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy life may be long’: the style is admirable for its humorous vein, and for its graphic description of old age—‘Senex bis puer.’ The earliest epic is the heroic poem of Pentaur, laureate to Ramses II. (B.C. 1333–1300); it is the prototype of the cyclic songs which, in Cyprus especially, preceded the _chef-d’œuvre_ of the Homerid chief; and it opens with an ‘Arma Virumque cano.’ The ‘Deadbook’ is the birth of the Drama, and it may date ages before the dialogues of Job. The ‘Canticles of Solomon’ are in the evocations of Isis and Nephthys.[469] The _critique_ of a young author’s production by a purist in style might add a sting to reviewing in the present day.[470] To the Egyptians we must attribute the invention of maps and plans. They first studied heraldry: every nome had its distinctive emblem, generally bird or beast; and each temple and guild its blazon.[471]

Literature would be imperfect without art and science, and accordingly we find their head-quarters and old home in Egypt. These studies humanised the people; their code suggests the mildness of modern penal law; and their reverence for letters, for old age, and for the dignity of man, makes them an eternal example to the world. The monuments show their fondness for music and painting. Their knowledge of statuary is proved by a host of works, especially the wooden Shaykh el-Balad (village chief) in the Bulak Museum—a marvel of skill, probably dating from the Fourth Dynasty, B.C. 3700. In architecture they invented the arch, round and pointed; eight several orders of columns, including the proto-Doric; Atlantes, Caryatides, and human-shaped consoles. The ‘temple of Jízeh’ near the sphinx is evidently older than the adjoining pyramids; it is a model of solidity in which the hardest stone is worked like wood.

[Heading: _EGYPT THE CRADLE-LAND._]

In science they especially cultivated geometry, astronomy, astrology, and ‘alchemy,’ whose name betrays its origin. Their arithmetic taught decimals and duodecimals. Their mathematics arose from measuring fields and calculating the cubes of altars. They knew the precession of the equinoxes: Rodier (p. 31) considers that they learnt it from observing the equinoctial point and the rising of Sothis, the Tuth-star, ‘the axle of the skies,’ in the same zodiacal sign, and that the studies at Syene date from B.C. 17,932. They knew the motion of the apsides, and the solar and stellar periods; they invented latitude and longitude; they denoted by a cross the intersection of the solstices and the equinoxes, and they published annual calendars. In optics they invented the lens. They were not ignorant of the motive power of steam, and possibly the electric fish had taught them the rudiments of electricity.

They were great in the mechanical arts. In medicine they dissected and vivisected: in agriculture they invented the plough, the harrow, the toothed sickle, the flail, and the tribulum; in carpentry the dove-tail; in ceramics the potter’s wheel, and in hydraulics the water-wheel. In gardening they transplanted full-grown trees. They made glass, porcelain, and counterfeit pearls and precious stones; and they used emery powder and the lapidary’s wheel. They spun silk, and knew the use of mordants for stuffs and dyes for hair. They made ‘babies’ (dolls) and children’s toys of clay, and they moulded masks of papier-mâché. In some points they were strangely modern. For hunting they wore dresses of ‘suppressed colour,’ not pink nor ‘rifleman’s green’: we are just beginning to find out our mistakes. They affected falconry, and played at the draughts which led to chess; and at _morra_, the Roman _micare digitis_. They sat on chairs whose shapes are like ours, not on divans nor on triclinia. In their house furniture they studiously avoided over-regularity; and Japan is now teaching England and Germany not to weary man’s eye by monotony.

And as they were advanced in literature and politics, the religion of earth, so they assiduously cultivated religion, the politics of heaven. The Biblical student has found among the tombs of Nile-land the absolute truth of what Celsus said—namely, that the Hebrews borrowed their tenets and practices from Egypt. Their date of the creation _ex nihilo_ (B.C. 4004–4620) was evidently Manetho’s period of the succession of Mena, and it is used even in our day. Their genesitic cosmogony, as Philo Judæus shows, and as Origen expressly declares, was an adaptation of Nilotic allegories and mysteries which the vulgar understood factually and literally. Their ‘Adam’ suggests ‘Atum,’ whence ‘Adima,’ the First Man amongst the Hindus. Their App or Apap (Apophis), whose determinative is a snake transfixed with four knife-blades,[472] is the great old serpent, the ophid-giant, Sin, Sathanas. The ‘Flood’[473] is the annual Nilotic inundation modified by the Izdubar legends of the Interamnian Plain. Noah, Nuh, Nöe, is suspiciously like Nu or Nuhu,[474] the Sailor of the Waters, the Lord of the Full Nile. Ham suggests Kam, the black race. The ark is the Bahr or Ua (Baris, Argo navis) of Nu, the sacred vessel portrayed in the ruins of Egyptian Elephanta, the boat of Osiris, or Uasur, the man-formed Sun-god; and the floating cradle of Moses is a mere replica of Osiris’ ark. In that complicated idolatry of deceased ancestors, based upon a system of monotheism,[475] or rather the worship of glorified man, which formed the religion of Egypt, the Sun typified human life. He rose as the infant Horus; he was the Lord Ka of the mid-day; as Tum he became old and set; and as Hormakhu (Harmachis) he shone to the under world below the horizon, Night and Death being the forerunners of Light and Life.[476]

The preternatural apparatus of both faiths (original and borrowed) is the same. The four genii of Death—Amset (under Isis), Hapi (Nephthys), Tuamutef (Neith), and Khebsenauf (Sebk)—became the four archangels. Of Urim and Thummim, the latter is the plural of Thmei (Themis), the blind or headless goddess of Truth and Justice.[477] Even such phrases as ‘I am that I am’[478] are loans from the hierogrammat; Ankh (I am Life) was rendered Yahveh (Jehovah). This ‘ineffable name’[479] is borrowed by some, Colenso included, from Semitic heathenism; but Brugsch shows that Egypt supplied the Mosaic conception of the Creator. There appears, indeed, direct derivation in the unity of the Deity and in the duality of Typhon, Set, Satan, the Evil Spirit. Later ages copied the local Triads of Kemi, in which the third proceeded from the other two. Both ecclesiastical establishments contained Prophets (_Sem_),[480] High Priests,[481] Priests, ‘Holy Fathers,’ and Scribes. The Decalogue is a _résumé_ of the forty-two commandments in the Deadbook (