DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29898#0132
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Part I.
9(5
relations ancl apparent content. The same exceptional mode of
writing. The same want of power to assimilate with surrounding
nations. Both hating war, but reverencing their kings, and counting
their chronology by dynasties exactly as the Egyptians have always
done. Their religions seem wonderfully alike, and both are charac-
terised by the same fearlessness of death, and the same calrn enjoyment
in the contemplation of its advent.1
In fact there is no peculiarity in the old kingdom of Egypt that
has not its counterpart in China at the present clay, though more or
less modihed, perhaps, by local circumstances; and there is nothing in
the older system which we cannot understand by using proper illus-
trations, derived from what we see passing under our immediate
observation in the far East. The great lesson we learn from the study
of the history of China as bearing on that of Egypt is, that all idea of
the impossibility of the recorded events in the latter country is taken
away by reference to the other. Neither the duration of the Egyptian
dynasties, nor the early perfection of her civilisation, or its strange
persistency, can be objected to as improbable. What we know has
happened in Asia in modern tirnes may certainly have taken place in
Africa, though at an earlier period.
1 By a singular coincidence, China has
been sufferiug from a Hyksos domination
of Tartar couquerors, precisely as Egypt
did after the period of the Pyramid
builders, and, strange to say, for about
the same period—five centuries. Had tlie
Taepings been successful, we shouldhave
wit-nessed in China tlie exact count-erpart
of what took place in Egypt when the 1st
native kings of the lSth dynasty expelled
tlie hated race.
Part I.
9(5
relations ancl apparent content. The same exceptional mode of
writing. The same want of power to assimilate with surrounding
nations. Both hating war, but reverencing their kings, and counting
their chronology by dynasties exactly as the Egyptians have always
done. Their religions seem wonderfully alike, and both are charac-
terised by the same fearlessness of death, and the same calrn enjoyment
in the contemplation of its advent.1
In fact there is no peculiarity in the old kingdom of Egypt that
has not its counterpart in China at the present clay, though more or
less modihed, perhaps, by local circumstances; and there is nothing in
the older system which we cannot understand by using proper illus-
trations, derived from what we see passing under our immediate
observation in the far East. The great lesson we learn from the study
of the history of China as bearing on that of Egypt is, that all idea of
the impossibility of the recorded events in the latter country is taken
away by reference to the other. Neither the duration of the Egyptian
dynasties, nor the early perfection of her civilisation, or its strange
persistency, can be objected to as improbable. What we know has
happened in Asia in modern tirnes may certainly have taken place in
Africa, though at an earlier period.
1 By a singular coincidence, China has
been sufferiug from a Hyksos domination
of Tartar couquerors, precisely as Egypt
did after the period of the Pyramid
builders, and, strange to say, for about
the same period—five centuries. Had tlie
Taepings been successful, we shouldhave
wit-nessed in China tlie exact count-erpart
of what took place in Egypt when the 1st
native kings of the lSth dynasty expelled
tlie hated race.