DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0178
EGYPT THE BIRTHPLACE OF GEEEK
DECORATIVE ART.
A scholar of no less distinction than the late Sir Richard
Burton wrote the other day of Egypt as " the inventor of
the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the preacher of animism
and metemps3Tchosis, and, generally, the source of all human
civilization." This is a broad statement; but it is literally
true. Hence the irresistible fascination of Egyptology — a
fascination which is quite unintelligible to those who are
ignorant of the subject. I have sometimes been asked, for
instance, how it happens that I — erewhile a novelist, and
therefore a professed student of men and manners as they
are—can take so lively an interest in the men and manners
of five or six thousand years ago. But it is precisely be-
cause these men of five or six thousand years ago had man-
ners, a written language, a literature, a school of art, and a
settled government that we find them so interesting. Our-
selves the creatures of a day, we delight in studies which
help us to realize that we stand between the eternity of the
past and the eternity of the future. Hence the charm of
those sciences which unfold to us, page by page, the un-
written records of the world we live in. Hence the eager-
ness with which we listen to the Story of Creation as told
by the geologist and the paleontologist.
DECORATIVE ART.
A scholar of no less distinction than the late Sir Richard
Burton wrote the other day of Egypt as " the inventor of
the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the preacher of animism
and metemps3Tchosis, and, generally, the source of all human
civilization." This is a broad statement; but it is literally
true. Hence the irresistible fascination of Egyptology — a
fascination which is quite unintelligible to those who are
ignorant of the subject. I have sometimes been asked, for
instance, how it happens that I — erewhile a novelist, and
therefore a professed student of men and manners as they
are—can take so lively an interest in the men and manners
of five or six thousand years ago. But it is precisely be-
cause these men of five or six thousand years ago had man-
ners, a written language, a literature, a school of art, and a
settled government that we find them so interesting. Our-
selves the creatures of a day, we delight in studies which
help us to realize that we stand between the eternity of the
past and the eternity of the future. Hence the charm of
those sciences which unfold to us, page by page, the un-
written records of the world we live in. Hence the eager-
ness with which we listen to the Story of Creation as told
by the geologist and the paleontologist.