DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4372#0076
60
With regard to the progress which the Egyptians had made in
the Sciences, we have very few data to lead us to any result on
this point. They must, however, have been familiar with the
theory and practice of many. When, with the fall of liberty,
literature was fast declining in Greece, and the sciences neglected
in their favourite abode, both the one and the other flourished in
Alexandria under the protection of the Ptolemies: and even
during a succession of reigns constantly disturbed by foreign
wars or domestic revolutions, new lights continued to be spread
over the world by the Greeks who studied in the Alexandrian
Academj'. We can only account for this circumstance on the
supposition that some of the less rigid Egyptian priests had
been prevailed upon to initiate the Greek philosophers in the
mysteries of their learning, and that these then published as
their own the first principles of astronomy and geometry; and
Alexandria long continued, amidst all its misfortunes, to be the
chief seat of learning in the Graeco-Roman empire,—till the aera
of the Mohammedan conquests.
The constant clearness of the sky during the night, naturally
conducted the earliest Egyptians to the study of the stars; but
we must allow that it required a long series of observations
before this people, without the assistance of telescopes, could
have traced the usual course of the Sun through the signs of
the Zodiac, arranged the different signs and constellations in
their order, given them the appropriate names, discovered the
precession of the equinoxes, and calculated with such accuracy
the limits of the solar year.—What a length of time has it not
taken for the nations of modern Europe to emerge from that bar-
barism and ignorance into which they had been plunged by the
temporary suppression and loss of the books that were to teach
them !
6 The
With regard to the progress which the Egyptians had made in
the Sciences, we have very few data to lead us to any result on
this point. They must, however, have been familiar with the
theory and practice of many. When, with the fall of liberty,
literature was fast declining in Greece, and the sciences neglected
in their favourite abode, both the one and the other flourished in
Alexandria under the protection of the Ptolemies: and even
during a succession of reigns constantly disturbed by foreign
wars or domestic revolutions, new lights continued to be spread
over the world by the Greeks who studied in the Alexandrian
Academj'. We can only account for this circumstance on the
supposition that some of the less rigid Egyptian priests had
been prevailed upon to initiate the Greek philosophers in the
mysteries of their learning, and that these then published as
their own the first principles of astronomy and geometry; and
Alexandria long continued, amidst all its misfortunes, to be the
chief seat of learning in the Graeco-Roman empire,—till the aera
of the Mohammedan conquests.
The constant clearness of the sky during the night, naturally
conducted the earliest Egyptians to the study of the stars; but
we must allow that it required a long series of observations
before this people, without the assistance of telescopes, could
have traced the usual course of the Sun through the signs of
the Zodiac, arranged the different signs and constellations in
their order, given them the appropriate names, discovered the
precession of the equinoxes, and calculated with such accuracy
the limits of the solar year.—What a length of time has it not
taken for the nations of modern Europe to emerge from that bar-
barism and ignorance into which they had been plunged by the
temporary suppression and loss of the books that were to teach
them !
6 The